LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – As school districts begin a new year, the Texas Education Agency is putting a focus on their performance.
The agency released their 2025/2026 Accountability Report on Friday. It grades school districts and individual schools on an A-F scale, based on different factors.
Those factors are school progress, based on how students compared to the prior year; “closing the gaps”, which measures whether performance gaps exist among different groups of students; and student achievement, which is largely based on the STAAR test.
Lubbock ISD is celebrating an improvement in its scores for the second year in a row. It had a C score of 78% for the 2023-2024 school year, improved to an 80% B for 2024-2025, and an 82% for 2025-2026.
The district credits that improvement partially to Monterey High School earning an A grade for the first time in school history.
Lubbock ISD Superintendent Kathy Rollo credits school leadership for that improvement.
“Great teachers work for great principals, so it’s great principals who are pouring into those teachers, investing in those teachers, and making sure they have what they need to be successful,” Rollo said. “We also made some adjustments in the way we look at our college and career readiness tools. Adjustments there really helped boost our high school scores as well.”
About 50% of Lubbock ISD’s schools saw improvement in TEA ratings. Rollo says the district is working hard to ensure the other half of those schools improve this year.
“Know that [your] child’s school is going to be getting supported, regardless of what their rating is,” Rollo said. “There are still great things happening at all of our campuses.”
Lubbock-Cooper ISD earned an 87% B rating from the TEA for the 2025-2026 school year. That’s steady within one or two points over the past several years.
Of Lubbock-Cooper ISD’s 10 schools, the TEA reports 8 campuses earned either A or B scores. Lubbock Cooper East Elementary and Lubbock Cooper South Elementary earned C grades.
Deputy Superintendent Macy Satterwhite says Lubbock-Cooper ISD is always working toward student success.
“We really dig in. What are our strengths? Where are opportunities to grow? Because we believe in continuous improvement. So every year we want to improve one thing. If we can do that, we’re doing our jobs,” Satterwhite said.
Frenship ISD earned a 77% rating, or C, from the TEA. That’s a 3% decline since the 2024-2025 school year.
The TEA reports of Frenship ISD’s 15 schools, only one – Crestview Elementary – earned an A. The other 14 earned B or C grades.
Frenship ISD administrators released this statement to KCBD today:
At Frenship ISD, academic achievement is one of our top priorities. When measuring student success, Frenship uses a range of methods to gauge academic progress and development. Our accountability ratings rely heavily on STAAR/EOC assessments, which provide meaningful data about student learning but reflect performance during a single assessment rather than the full scope of a student’s growth and abilities.
In preparation for the upcoming school year, we will continue to analyze data and customize instruction for each student, ensuring that all students receive the necessary support to thrive academically.
Both Lubbock ISD and Lubbock-Cooper ISD shared those concerns that the STAAR test plays such a large role in the grading process.
“At Lubbock-Cooper in particular, we think STAAR is important with a lowercase ‘i’,” Satterwhite said. “The whole child cannot be measured by one multiple choice test. And so, we believe in using multiple measures. It would be just like going to the doctor and relying on a temperature check to be your entire workup, your entire medical record. And so, we think that we need to look at the entire system.”
“We also look at many other indicators. Is the child going to be college career or military ready? And that’s based on the courses that they take. We look at dual credit. How much dual credit hours are our students achieving? We look at advanced placement courses and how students do on those. There are many, many factors,” Rollo said.
All TEA Accountability reports can be found here.
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