Talia Martinez reads a book in March at the Oak Springs Elementary School library. The most important questions about a school often aren’t answered by standardized test results, David DeMatthews writes.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
In mid-August, Texas will once again assign A-F grades to its public schools. Before treating those grades as a final verdict on district or school quality, Texans should ask a simple question: What exactly are they measuring?
According to the Texas Education Agency, the purpose of the A-F system is to continuously improve student performance, eliminate achievement gaps and ensure Texas is a national leader in preparing students for success after high school. Yet the state’s constitutional obligation to cultivate an educated citizenry extends beyond what standardized tests can measure.
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Despite those broad ambitions, A-F ratings are driven largely by STAAR results, which are based on a limited number of subjects tested under highly controlled conditions on a few days each year. That reliance is difficult to reconcile with STAAR’s own guidance, which states that assessment results are most useful as just “one component of an evaluation system” because they cannot capture every factor that contributes to educational success.
Other data are clearly needed to determine if students feel safe and supported, if teachers have built meaningful relationships with children and families, if schools foster curiosity and creativity, and if students are developing the civic, social and leadership skills necessary to thrive in a democracy and the workplace.
These indicators are missing from the A-F system, despite being central to the educational mission envisioned in the Texas Constitution. More concerning, the A-F system assumes student learning can be neatly measured and compared from year to year. Research synthesized by the National Academies shows that learning is often uneven, shaped by children’s development, motivation, relationships, culture and context.
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Academic outcomes are also influenced by factors beyond school walls, including housing, healthcare, nutrition, neighborhood conditions and family support. Districts and schools can help students overcome these challenges, but they cannot eliminate them on their own. Of course, none of this means schools should not be held accountable.
As a former teacher and school administrator who now studies education policy, I know not every district or school is serving students as well as they could. Accountability matters because our children get only one shot at receiving the best education. Families and taxpayers also deserve transparency about the performance of their schools.
Accountability is clearly needed, but any accountability system must recognize that districts and schools are responsible for far more than raising test scores. Texans deserve information about whether students feel safe and supported, whether they have access to rigorous coursework, whether they are engaged in civic and community life, and whether their work demonstrates growth, creativity and critical thinking.
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A-F ratings that ignore these important dimensions of schooling are not merely incomplete. They reflect a failure of state leadership and ingenuity by reducing school quality to what is easiest to measure at the expense of what is most important to families, children and the future of our state.
Moreover, these limitations raise serious questions about when state intervention is warranted based on the current accountability system and what such interventions should prioritize. Houston ISD offers a telling example.
While the takeover was justified largely through a test-driven accountability framework, families ultimately care about much more than test scores. Since the takeover, Houston ISD has seen higher teacher turnover, declining participation in advanced coursework, lower parent satisfaction, enrollment losses, a narrowed and heavily scripted curriculum, and alarming proposals to move some students with disabilities into specialized hubs. These developments speak to dimensions of school quality that the current A-F system overlooks.
So, as A-F ratings are released and the media and public debate their meaning, Texans would be wise to remember that they are not a final verdict on schools. They are merely a convenient, simplistic and often blurry snapshot of a far more complex reality.
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Test scores matter, but an accountability system built largely around them measures far too little of what matters most. Until that changes, A-F ratings may carry enormous consequences, yet they will continue to offer only a narrow and incomplete picture of the quality of our public schools.
David DeMatthews is a professor of education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is expressing his views as a private citizen.