BRAZOS VALLEY — Each year students take the STAAR exam and the TEA uses this to come up with an accountability rating. Well, this year things are different.
With everything that the state of Texas has endured in the last year and a half, from the pandemic to natural disasters, the TEA has declared all campuses and districts not rated, declaring a state of disaster.
The TEA recently released the 2021 accountability manual.
“It says district and campuses receive a ‘Not Rated’ declared state of disaster label overall and in each domain,” said Caldwell ISD, Superintendent Andrew Peters.
This is not the first year schools have seen this.
“It’s 2019, that’s the last time we had ratings was 2019,” added Peters.
Some schools like Bremond experienced a tough school year after forcing closures due to COVID outbreaks.
“There is not supposed to be a ranking, I mean this year, and in my opinion, there shouldn’t be a ranking for several years,” said Daryl Stuard, superintendent for Bremond ISD
As many difficulties faced superintendent Daryl Stuard acknowledges the battle some students may face along the way.
“I know everybody is going to struggle some because of COVID and everything everybody missed. There’s no way around it, I feel like we’ll fight the battle until these kids who were in pre-k until they graduate,” Stuard explained.
These superintendents are less concerned about the funding they’re possibly missing out on and focused on the bigger picture, the kids.
”To focus on the individual child if we can switch our focus from how well is the campus doing, district doing, to get every child to do better the ratings will come up when they come back,” explained Peters.
The last ratings these school districts received were both in the 80 percentiles.