GALVESTON, Texas -- Clear Creek school district has for the first time achieved an exemplary rating, while Galveston school district earned an unacceptable rating from state education officials in accountability reports released Friday.
Overall, county school districts showed improvement, but many benefited from a controversial rule that some legislators argue artificially inflates the ratings.
The Texas Projection Measure gives campuses credit for gains students are projected to make in the future.
Forty-seven campuses in the county received a ratings boost from the measure, according to the Texas Education Agency reports.
State ratings use a combination of Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills scores, completion rates and dropout rates to calculate the ratings.
The ratings are divided into four tiers: exemplary, recognized, academically acceptable and academically unacceptable.
The Texas Projection Measure helped Clear Creek improve on lagging math and science TAKS scores that prevented the district from previously earning an exemplary rating.
A graduation rate below 97 percent also kept the district from reaching exemplary status in previous years.
"The highest level of learning is when students are engaged," Superintendent Greg Smith said. "We made an effort to increase the level of student involvement. That’s the ticket as far as I’m concerned."
Friendswood school district once again achieved an exemplary rating. Five of the district’s six campuses also received exemplary status.
Dickinson school district was rated as academically acceptable despite having five exemplary and four recognized campuses. The overall rating was because the high school rated as only acceptable.
Cowan, Wollam and Kubacak elementary schools in the Santa Fe school district earned exemplary ratings, helping the district earn a recognized rating overall. According to the state ratings reports, 47 of the county’s 95 campuses received exemplary ratings.
Three Galveston campuses were rated exemplary — Galveston Early College High, Austin Middle and Oppe Elementary schools — but three were rated unacceptable, pulling the whole district into that category.
The three were Ball High, AIM Middle and Rosenberg Elementary schools — but Ball would have been rated recognized had it not been for its dropout and completion numbers, while both the other schools had unacceptable ratings in only a small minority of their TAKS results.
District officials said the ratings were based not only on the 2009-10 school-year TAKS test scores but also on the 2008-09 school-year dropout and high school completion numbers, because of which they were investigating ways to appeal the unacceptable ratings.
The 2008-09 school year was hit within days of its start by Hurricane Ike, which has left the district severely depleted in student numbers ever since.
Last year, it left the district just 11 students short of the number needed for an acceptable completion rating, and the district won an appeal against that constraint.
This year, the deficiency in the completion standard is even less, at eight students.
"We are looking critically at which areas we failed, and there will be far-reaching systematic changes in the new school year from top to bottom," interim Superintendent Ann Dixon said.
Texas City school district recovered from last year’s unacceptable rating, and its high school also achieved a recognized rating.
"We are very excited about the improvement at the high school," Superintendent Bob Brundrett said. "It’s great work by the staff, but I think the new leadership has helped."
The improved ratings were helped in large part because of the use of the Texas Projection Measure. Brundrett had no problem with that.
"Frankly, we don’t care," Brundrett said. "We have been beaten up for so many years, we will take some good news where we can.
"(The TEA) picked the TPM over the objections of the superintendents in this state, and that is the standard we are all measured by."
Even without the standard applied, the district and high school would have been rated academically acceptable, Brundrett said.
"That still would be a major improvement," he said.
The La Marque school district’s Westlawn Elementary was the highest ranked campus in that district with a recognized rating. Overall, the district received an academically acceptable rating from the state, but officials said its students received exemplary ratings in reading, writing and social studies test scores.
The Hitchcock school district was given an acceptable rating, but its Stewart Elementary campus was rated as academically unacceptable. Many of the students from Stewart moved to the new Primary School campus in the spring.
The High Island school district was given a recognized status, as was the high school.
The county’s three charter schools also did well. Ambassadors Preparatory Academy in Galveston earned the state’s top rating, while Mainland Preparatory Academy in La Marque was listed as a recognized campus, and Odyssey Academy in Galveston earned an academically acceptable rating.
With the release of the ratings, Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott announced changes were planned for how the Texas Projection Measure would be used in the future.
"We understand that some people have concerns with these measures, particularly with the Texas Projection Measure," Scott said. "TPM is a complex regression analysis, but I believe it to be reliable. Nonetheless, I am willing to re-examine its use because we want the public to have complete faith in the school ratings."
Scott said he would consider proposing getting rid of the TPM standard, overhauling it or making it an option for districts to use.
T.J. Aulds, Hayley Kappes and Ian White contributed to this report.
