Monday, August 11, 2008

Texas Accountability Ratings for Richardson schools in detail

By Andrew Laska of Richardson Echo

The Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) Accountability ratings were released on August 1 and the Richardson Independent School District (RISD) showed improvement in the ratings. The district’s overall rating remained at “Recognized” while the number of schools rated as “Exemplary” in the district increased. In the eleven schools of the Plano Independent School District (PISD) that cover parts of Richardson, an upward improvement was seen.

Of the RISD’s 56 campuses 27 were rated Exemplary, 19 were Recognized, 7 were Academically Acceptable, and none were Academically Unacceptable. Of the PISD’s 11 campuses that cover parts of Richardson, 3 were rated Exemplary, 4 were Recognized, 4 were Academically Acceptable and none were Academically Unacceptable.

Compared to the previous year the Richardson ISD 15 new schools moved to the Exemplary category. That represents about 25% of all RISD campuses. Two of the eleven Plano ISD campuses that cover parts of Richardson moved into better performing categories.

The only downside of the RISD ratings was the fact that all RISD high schools are rated Academically Acceptable. JJ Pearce High School was Recognized the previous year but slipped to Academically Acceptable this year.

We contacted RISD Superintendent Dr. David Simmons via e-mail and he stated, “Our high school accountability ratings are not where we’d like them to be, and that continues to be one of our priorities moving forward. What is very encouraging is that secondary TAKS performance districtwide continues to improve, and we are headed in the right direction.”

The RISD’s success while having a diverse campus makeup that commonly might not be thought of as producing success was noticed by the Dallas Morning News on July 28.

The News editorial stated, “Superintendents running school districts in Plano, Frisco and McKinney may want to pay attention to what's happening on campuses in nearby Richardson…. The Texas Education Agency also reports that nearly half of Richardson's students qualify as economically disadvantaged….Large numbers of poor children can challenge educators, but schools in the Richardson ISD are going forward at pretty close to full speed…. The state has awarded Richardson its second highest-ranking the last two years. That's a feat for a diverse district and requires large numbers of students progressing in math, science, reading, language and social studies.”

Much has been discussed in the press about “exceptions” that districts could use to boost their ratings. Our sources told us that RISD did not use any exceptions. We were not able to determine if PISD used any of these exceptions for the schools that overlap Richardson.

Both districts saw improvements, and a breakdown of the districts is shown below:

Pegasus News content partner - Richardson Echo

Related stories

• Pegasus News Week in View: Back to School Edition (Aug. 14, 2008)

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• Richardson ISD

Comments

Alex Bentley Staff

Thanks, lascough -- we've fixed it now.

3 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )