ECISD working to improve schools

Yahoo

25-04-2025

Apr. 24—With the Texas Education Agency's 2023 A-F Accountability Ratings released, the ratings are not official, but that doesn't mean Ector County ISD hasn't been working on schools that need extra support.
Following a nearly two-year court case that was recently resolved by an appellate court ruling, ECISD received an overall grade of C, compared to B in the 2022-23 school year.
Six schools earned an A, 12 got a B, six received a C, 11 schools got a D, including Travis which was closed in May 2024, and three schools were rated F, including Burleson Elementary which closed in May 2024 and will reopen in August 2026 as an early childhood education center.
A daycare center is still in the works for Travis, Chief Communications Officer Mike Adkins said in an email.
ECISD Executive Director of Accountability and School Improvement Robert Trejo said ECISD is waiting for guidance from TEA on what happens with the F campuses. Trejo said district officials had an idea of where the scores might land, but they were not official.
"Now that they're official ... we're in the same dilemma again with the 2024 ratings because there's an inclination of where those scores might land, but nothing's official. We have this situation where some of our campuses that might have been an F in 2023 we're showing that they might not be an F," Trejo said.
He added that the district had an idea internally of where campuses were in accountability ratings, so they didn't wait to jump in.
The data is two or in some cases three years old, depending on what you're looking at, Trejo said.
"Our district has already engaged in work, whether it was providing interventions for students, revamping the offerings for CCMR to our kids ... a lot of that work has already been in place for ... over a year now. But officially, TEA has not given us anything like you need to do X, Y, Z for these campuses. We still don't have direction from them, so we're just kind of monitoring that situation and waiting," he added.
Schools that are F rated for five consecutive years can be ordered closed or the board replaced.
"What we try to do is obviously provide the support that the campuses need way before that. The moment a campus is either F or D rated, we start looking at the data, breaking it down and seeing what is that campus leadership and the teachers and that community need to get ahead of the curve," Trejo said.
Right now, ECISD doesn't have any campuses that are at that five-year mark, he added.
"We're not there yet, but it doesn't mean that we're not also engaging in work to prevent that," Trejo said.
All campuses create Campus Improvement Plans at the beginning of the year. They look at their data from the previous year and break it down by things like student performance, grade level, subject area and subpopulations. Then they look at how they allocate their resources, their personnel, plans for professional development, how they are going to support students in "the four corners of the classroom," after-school tutoring and other interventions.
"They look at all of that and then ... they make a plan. The campus improvement plan is really that driving, guiding document for the entire year, that commitment of hey, looking at the data from the previous year at the beginning of the year, this is work that we need to engage in to support our kids. Then it becomes their blueprint ... that they're going to engage in for the rest of the year," Trejo said.
Parents can transfer their students to another school based on campus performance. Trejo said the district would prefer to keep students at their schools, but if parents have questions they can call his office at 432-456-5811 and there is information on his department's website at https://www.ectorcountyisd.org/departments/accountability/welcome
He also recommends talking to the campus administrators and principals, "hear them out to see the work that they're engaging in."
"I know as a former principal I wanted to keep my kids. This is your school. This is your community. We might not have performed where we wanted to ... but it's all a collective commitment. We're all going to work together. We're gong to look at the data and we're going to put things in place to give everybody the best education that we can," Trejo said.
In a briefing April 22, Education Commissioner Mike Morath said new ratings will be released Aug. 15 for the 2024-25 school year.
"That's of course how it will work unless we get sued again. We've been sued two years in a row. It's taxpayer funded lawsuits so the people that choose to file the lawsuits will have to pay for them," Morath said.
The agency also issued "What if" ratings.
"The rating methodology was basically the same from 2017 through 2022. In '23 there were tweaks to the calculation of how the ratings were calculated. So what we did was we went back to '22 and we recalculated all the schools' performances using their data from '22 but using the newer methodology," Morath said.
"So the 'what if' rating is a way of comparing apples to apples performance between '22 and '23. Cut scores are part of that methodology. It's sort like what percentage of kids need to be on grade level in order for you to get an A. What percentage of kids need to be on grade level in order for you to get a B. ... Think about it the same way a teacher might have a grade book" where quizzes count for a certain percentage, in-class tests count for a certain percentage and projects count for a certain percentage, Morath added.
In information released April 24, it says there were no changes to STAAR achievement cut points for elementary and middle schools.
"The refreshed system better recognizes how well campuses are Closing the Gaps and accelerating instruction," the information says.
Ratings and other information can be found at TXSchools.gov.
School by school 2023 Accountability Ratings:
A schools
— Hays STEAM Academy Elementary
— Reagan Magnet Elementary
— Gale Pond Alamo STEAM Academy
— New Tech Odessa
— Odessa Collegiate Academy
— OCTECHS
B schools
— Austin Montessori
— Blanton Elementary
— Burnet Elementary
— Cameron Dual Language Elementary
— Dowling Elementary
— West Elementary
— Ross Elementary
— San Jacinto Elementary
— Ector College Prep MS
— Nimitz MS
— Wilson & Young MS
— STEM Academy
C schools
— Milam Fine Arts Elementary
— LBJ Elementary
— Fly Elementary
— Noel Elementary
— Crockett MS
— Permian HS
D schools
— Jordan Elementary
— Blackshear Elementary
— Travis (closed in May 2024)
— Goliad Elementary
— Gonzales Elementary
— Ireland Elementary
— Cavazos Elementary
— Buice Elementary
— Bonham MS
— Bowie MS
— Odessa HS
F schools
— Burleson (closed in May 2024, will reopen in August 2026 as an early education center)
— EK Downing Elementary
— Sam Houston Elementary
ECISD by the numbers
ECISD's total enrollment is 33,268, according to TEA.
It is 79.4 percent Hispanic, 66.4 percent economically disadvantaged, has 10.4 percent special education students, and 23.8 percent emergent bilingual/English learners.
The attendance rate is 90.8 percent.
Chronic absenteeism is 33.3 percent.
The district has 3,784 employees, 1,774 of which are teachers. The average teacher salary is $63,387.
Q&A with TEA
What was the average rating statewide?
Highlights of the 2023 State Academic Accountability Results
Of the 1,209 school systems in Texas, 1,198 were evaluated. 128 (10.4%) earned an A overall rating, 479 (40.2%) earned an B overall rating, 382 (32.8%) earned a C overall rating, 168 (13.9%) earned a D overall rating and 41(2.7%) earned an F overall rating.
Of the 9,044 campuses in Texas (including open-enrollment charter campuses, and including campuses evaluated under Alternative Education Accountability), 8,539 were evaluated. Of the campuses considered for ratings, 1,646 (19.3%) earned an A overall rating, 2,873 (33.6%) campuses earned a B overall rating, 2,107 (24.7%) earned a C overall rating, 1,264 (14.8%) campuses earned a D overall rating, 649 (7.6%) an F overall rating.
On the ratings, if a district had schools that failed in 2023, what happens to them?
Campuses that receive an overall D or F rating in state accountability must engage in school improvement interventions. Under state law, this includes conducting a needs assessment and developing and implementing an improvement plan. What do those schools need to do?
Campuses that received a second consecutive unacceptable rating with the preliminary 2023 A-F accountability ratings are required by state law to develop a campus turnaround plan.
Campuses that received a third or higher consecutive unacceptable rating with the preliminary 2023 A-F accountability ratings are required by state law to implement their previously approved campus turnaround plan and may request a modification to the previously approved plan.
Do they wait until new ratings are released in August?
Campuses that received their first unacceptable rating with the preliminary 2023 A-F accountability ratings do not have to submit their plans to the agency until 2025 ratings are released. Once the 2025 ratings are released, all campuses continue with a 2025 unacceptable rating must submit improvement plans to the agency.
It should be noted that while the 2023 ratings were just publicly released, school leaders have had access to the underlying data subsets since Nov. 16, 2023, and should already have been engaged in improvement planning and implementation.
This is the first year What If ratings have been issued. They were issued to assist districts with direct comparisons between 2022 and 2023 data due to the A-F refresh.