Injunction Issued to Halt Controversial A-F labels

This week, as the Texas House Committee on Public Education met to discuss private school vouchers that would syphon tax dollars from our public schools, a Travis County district court issued a temporary injunction to halt the release of the controversial A-F school ratings determined by the governor-appointed commissioner of education. Five public school districts petitioned the court to stop the release, arguing that the commissioner of education has failed to abide by statutory requirements.

The A-F ratings are controversial because they are overly simplified, based primarily on the STAAR test, and are also used as justification for the commissioner to take over entire elected school boards of trustees including the largest district in Texas, Houston ISD. In Houston, the Commissioner of Education Mike Morath replaced its democratically elected school board with an appointed board of managers and appointed Mike Miles as superintendent, thereby undermining local governance and disenfranchising the voters of Houston. The result has been record numbers of teacher turnover, record numbers of uncertified teachers hired, and community members losing trust in their school district as evidenced by overwhelming opposition expressed during board meetings and community protests including a resolution of no confidence by the Houston Federation of Teachers.

The A-F labels were also halted last year after a Travis County district court found that the commissioner of education failed to comply with various statutory obligations in the Texas Education Code. Specifically, the district court found that the commissioner failed to first determine whether the STAAR is valid and reliable, failed to provide school districts with fair notice of the measures, methods, and procedures that would be used to determine the A-F labels, and failed to ensure that it was mathematically possible for every school district and campus to achieve an A rating. The Texas Education Code requires that an assessment instrument must first be determined to be valid and reliable by an entity that is "independent of the agency (TEA) and of any other entity that developed the assessment instrument" based on "empirical evidence."

Since that last injunction in 2023, the commissioner has failed to address the statutory requirements he was found to violate but then he alarmingly replaced human graders with artificial intelligence (AI) to grade written portions of the STAAR test. Again, this radical change was not determined to be valid and reliable, yet the stakes could not be higher. It was the labels repeatedly placed on one single school campus within HISD's 276 school campuses that the commissioner used as reason enough to undermine Houston voters and take over their elected school board and oversight of over 180,000 students. Another major change by the commissioner this year is the way College, Career, and Military Readiness (CCMR) is being calculated. The radical change (from a requirement of 60% for an A to 88% for an A) that is retroactive and accounts for 2023 graduates makes it mathematically impossible for many school districts and campuses to achieve an A rating. It is as if our public schools are being set up to fail.

Remember, the same governor who appointed Commissioner of Education Mike Morath to determine these labels is the same governor who called multiple special sessions last year to try to pass a private school voucher scam at the behest of his billionaire benefactors. Gov. Abbott's plan is to defund our schools, demonize them through labels, and then privatize them. The state has failed to increase the basic allotment for public schools since 2019 while Gov. Abbott continues to hoard almost $33 billion of our tax dollars that public schools desperately need now.

Beware, the same proponents of these oversimplified A-F labels of schools are the same proponents behind private school vouchers, so it's no coincidence that the Gov. Abbott's appointee is making these standards much more strict at a time when our public schools are being starved of state support, cutting programs, laying off teachers, and enlarging class sizes. Our students deserve more.

The injunction issued this week is temporary and there will be a hearing on August 26 to determine if it should be extended. Stay tuned to the Hotline for updates on this ongoing story.