An unclear state on how school districts will be evaluated by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in its annual accountability ratings had Deputy Superintendent Kim Spicer “concerned.”

Spicer presented the changes alongside Stephen Davis, executive director of secondary curriculum, during the Monday, Feb. 27, Wylie ISD Board of Trustees meeting. The main focus of the presentation was on the potential impacts to the district’s rating when it comes to the college, career and military readiness (CCMR) metric.

Spicer said the statistic uses certain criteria — such as scores on an Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test, industry-based certifications or SAT and ACT results and dual-credit hours — to determine a student’s college, career or military readiness. As with any new system, there were initial growing pains.

“As you can tell, there are many different ways for our kids to receive their college readiness indicator,” Spicer said. “When this was first rolled out, it took us a little bit of time to learn all the rules of the ballgame, but we did.”

In the most recent TEA Accountability Ratings, 79% of Wylie ISD students were deemed to be college, career or military ready, which earned the district a score of 95. The CCMR percentage is calculated by taking the total number of students who satisfy the criteria and dividing by the number of graduates in a given year.

In 2018, Governor Greg Abbott unveiled a plan to have all school district’s reach at least a 60% benchmark for CCMR, said Spicer, adding that all district’s to satisfy that requirement receive an A in that category for the accountability rankings. 

New guidelines proposed would increase the threshold to 88%, leaving Wylie ISD with a score of 81 if it achieved the same 79% marker in the proposed system, Davis said. The new scoring system would create a proportionality of scores with about 20% of districts fitting into the A, B, C, D and F score ranges, he added.

For the full story, see the March 8 issue of The Wylie News.