Accountability
April 22, 2025
Dear CFISD Community,
Two years ago, we joined a lawsuit against the Commissioner of Education related to accountability and testing—not to avoid accountability, but to hold the Commissioner accountable for following the law. Although CFISD’s participation in this lawsuit is now complete, it’s important that I share some context about this process.
The 15th Court of Appeals of Texas ruled on April 3 to reverse a lower court’s decision blocking the release of the 2023 Texas Education Agency (TEA) A-F accountability ratings. Their release had been on hold due to a lawsuit brought by more than 100 school districts (including CFISD) against the Commissioner.
The court ruled that although the system was unfair and unreasonable to districts, it was not illegal. I would like to share some additional background on what led to CFISD’s participation as an “intervenor school district plaintiff” in the suit.
The lawsuit was in response to TEA not following the Texas Education Code on when the accountability manual should have been made available to school districts. The approved manual was released on Oct. 31, 2023—months after the 2022-2023 school year was complete!
Additionally, TEA changed the rules after students had completed the STAAR/EOC testing for the 2022-2023 school year, applying new methodology to a group of students (class of 2022) who had already graduated from high school. One of the biggest changes was related to the college, career and military readiness (CCMR) metric, increasing the required points to earn an “A” from 60 to 88!
We also discovered that the 2023 STAAR tests were scored through a “hybrid scoring model” involving an automated scoring engine using artificial intelligence. Responses are routed through this new system, and at least 25% of student responses are routed to human scorers. An investigation is underway as to whether this is contributing to unusually large scores of “0” on some of these responses.
The new “STAAR 2.0” assessment was mandated to be taken online with an expectation that students in third grade and older would have expertise in manipulating online tools including drag-and-drop, graphing, drop-down menus, highlighting and keyboarding for extended and short constructed responses.
All of these factors combine for a concerning precedent by the state that has a devastating trickle-down effect on districts and campuses:
- students are punished with no knowledge or control over the change in rules they were playing by. This is the equivalent of winning a close football game, then discovering your touchdowns were only worth 3 points each instead of 6—so now you lost the game;
- campuses spent time preparing students for a test they thought would be scored in a certain manner that was later changed;
- the CCMR scoring change negatively impacted high school letter grades, which comprise a significant percentage of our overall district grade;
- elementary students faced a significantly more difficult test;
- a flawed Artificial Intelligence (AI) grading system scored the short-constructed and extended-constructed test responses; and
- we were held accountable in a year when a new test was released, instead of a phased-in approach.
During the first year of a test change, the state has typically provided districts a year to analyze and make adjustments to curriculum before the scores count for the following year. Consider, for a moment, if CFISD was to potentially change graduation requirements. This change would be implemented with an incoming freshman class, not with juniors who were already on their graduation path. This would be patently unfair, and akin to the magnitude of this shift in testing.
The 2023 district-level and campus ratings were made available to school systems on April 17, and will be publicly available and accessible on TXSchools.gov on April 24. I hope this letter helps you understand why sharing of the 2023 ratings has been delayed. You can find the preliminary campus ratings issued by TEA on the School Ratings page of the district website under the 2022-23 tab.
Despite our participation in the lawsuit, we have continued to move forward, providing interventions and addressing gaps where needed to ensure student success. As we hold ourselves, our students, and our staff accountable, we also hold the Commissioner accountable for complying with the law regarding timelines and dates.
In the best interest of children,
Doug Killian, Ph.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Accountability
April 22, 2025
Dear CFISD Community,
Two years ago, we joined a lawsuit against the Commissioner of Education related to accountability and testing—not to avoid accountability, but to hold the Commissioner accountable for following the law. Although CFISD’s participation in this lawsuit is now complete, it’s important that I share some context about this process.
The 15th Court of Appeals of Texas ruled on April 3 to reverse a lower court’s decision blocking the release of the 2023 Texas Education Agency (TEA) A-F accountability ratings. Their release had been on hold due to a lawsuit brought by more than 100 school districts (including CFISD) against the Commissioner.
The court ruled that although the system was unfair and unreasonable to districts, it was not illegal. I would like to share some additional background on what led to CFISD’s participation as an “intervenor school district plaintiff” in the suit.
The lawsuit was in response to TEA not following the Texas Education Code on when the accountability manual should have been made available to school districts. The approved manual was released on Oct. 31, 2023—months after the 2022-2023 school year was complete!
Additionally, TEA changed the rules after students had completed the STAAR/EOC testing for the 2022-2023 school year, applying new methodology to a group of students (class of 2022) who had already graduated from high school. One of the biggest changes was related to the college, career and military readiness (CCMR) metric, increasing the required points to earn an “A” from 60 to 88!
We also discovered that the 2023 STAAR tests were scored through a “hybrid scoring model” involving an automated scoring engine using artificial intelligence. Responses are routed through this new system, and at least 25% of student responses are routed to human scorers. An investigation is underway as to whether this is contributing to unusually large scores of “0” on some of these responses.
The new “STAAR 2.0” assessment was mandated to be taken online with an expectation that students in third grade and older would have expertise in manipulating online tools including drag-and-drop, graphing, drop-down menus, highlighting and keyboarding for extended and short constructed responses.
All of these factors combine for a concerning precedent by the state that has a devastating trickle-down effect on districts and campuses:
- students are punished with no knowledge or control over the change in rules they were playing by. This is the equivalent of winning a close football game, then discovering your touchdowns were only worth 3 points each instead of 6—so now you lost the game;
- campuses spent time preparing students for a test they thought would be scored in a certain manner that was later changed;
- the CCMR scoring change negatively impacted high school letter grades, which comprise a significant percentage of our overall district grade;
- elementary students faced a significantly more difficult test;
- a flawed Artificial Intelligence (AI) grading system scored the short-constructed and extended-constructed test responses; and
- we were held accountable in a year when a new test was released, instead of a phased-in approach.
During the first year of a test change, the state has typically provided districts a year to analyze and make adjustments to curriculum before the scores count for the following year. Consider, for a moment, if CFISD was to potentially change graduation requirements. This change would be implemented with an incoming freshman class, not with juniors who were already on their graduation path. This would be patently unfair, and akin to the magnitude of this shift in testing.
The 2023 district-level and campus ratings were made available to school systems on April 17, and will be publicly available and accessible on TXSchools.gov on April 24. I hope this letter helps you understand why sharing of the 2023 ratings has been delayed. You can find the preliminary campus ratings issued by TEA on the School Ratings page of the district website under the 2022-23 tab.
Despite our participation in the lawsuit, we have continued to move forward, providing interventions and addressing gaps where needed to ensure student success. As we hold ourselves, our students, and our staff accountable, we also hold the Commissioner accountable for complying with the law regarding timelines and dates.
In the best interest of children,
Doug Killian, Ph.D.
Superintendent of Schools