The Texas Education Agency graded school districts this summer, and we are proud to report that our own Lamar Consolidated Independent School District moved to the head of the class, earning one of the few A ratings given out this year.
Only 301 out of 1,200 school districts received a top score under the new rating system based on performance in three areas – Student Achievement, School Progress and Closing the Gaps. Districts earn an “A” for exemplary performance when they serve most students well and encourage high academic achievement and/or appropriate academic growth for students.
Schools are also awarded A-F ratings.
Fulshear High School, zoned to Vanbrooke, received an A rating and six distinctions for ELA/Reading, Social Studies, Comparative Academic Growth, Postsecondary Readiness and Comparative Closing the Gaps. Only 21 percent of all Texas schools were rated as A campuses and even fewer earned nearly all of the designated distinctions.
The new system bases 70 percent of a school’s ratings on the highest scaled score earned in one of three categories: raw student achievement, student progress and performance relative to percentages of economically disadvantaged students. The remaining 30 percent of the grades are generated by measuring how schools close achievement gaps between different groups of students.
The measures used to create those scale scores are based almost solely on how students performed on the 2018-2019 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. For high schools, officials measure students’ test scores as well as graduation rates and college and career readiness metrics.
We congratulate the district, schools, teachers and staff on a stellar performance!