AUSTIN, Texas — Due to the coronavirus pandemic, and despite many districts' efforts to move over to online learning, all public school districts and campuses within the state of Texas will not receive a rating this year.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced on April 2 that due to the virus's disruptive effects on more than 5.5 million Texas students, the districts and campuses will instead receive a label of "Not Rated: Declared State of Disaster" for the 2020 Academic Accountability Cycle.
This decision follows the State's recent extension of statewide school closures, making it virtually impossible for the TEA to measure district and campus performance by its traditional methods. As of Thursday, kindergarten through twelfth-grade schools are to remain closed at least through May 4.
"While we continuously work to ensure our 'A-F' Accountability System paints an accurate picture of school performance, these unprecedented circumstances have forced all of us to change and adapt," said Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath. "Given we won't have underlying information to assess performance, we won't be assigning accountability letter grades for the 2019-20 school year."
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While this "Not Rated" label provides a one-year accountability pause, much like the one given to districts and campuses after the natural disasters that impacted many Texas counties in 2016, the rating will not break the chain of consecutive years of unacceptable ratings for the purpose of accountability interventions and sanctions. As such, an overall or domain rating of "D" or "F" for the 2020-21 school year will be considered consecutive years for the determination of multi-year unacceptable status.
Also under this label, districts and campuses will be required to continue implementing any previously ordered interventions. So, ordered interventions enforced by districts and/or campuses during the 2019-20 school year must roll over to the 2020-2021 school year
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