Spring Branch ISD Featured News

On Sunday, June 2, the local non-profit Children at Risk (C@R) released its 2019 school report card. The report is based on 2017-2018 school year results on the state’s STAAR and End of Course (EOC) exams. Results were published in the print version of the Houston Chronicle, as well as online search platforms. 

Unfortunately, the report included inaccurate “grades” and ranking totals for SBISD and our schools as C@R’s methodology failed to include many high performing secondary students. 

C@R has issued this related statement: 

Due to the new Texas Education Agency (TEA) provision allowing use of substitute exams (PSAT, SAT, ACT) instead of STAAR, Children at Risk updated Spring Branch ISD middle and high school grades to account for substitutions. Although middle and high school grades are correct on the Houston Chronicle’s online search platform and Children at Risk’s TexasSchoolGuide.org http://texasschoolguide.org/, unfortunately the print copy of the Houston Chronicle was in production and unable to be updated. We extend our sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

SBISD encourages our middle and high school students to take substitute assessments like PSAT, SAT and the ACT. When students earn qualifying scores on such exams to meet graduation requirements, SBISD does not require these students to take EOC exams. TEA changed its own methodology to include substitutions for EOCs beginning in the 2017-18 school year. 

While C@R did update the student achievement grade for SBISD schools to include those students taking substitute assessments, C@R did NOT update its methodology to include these students when calculating the student progress/growth grade, where it still relies solely on EOC exams. Thus, large numbers of our students are not counted, nor is their progress reflected in the C@R progress/growth grade in either the online or the print version of their report.   

While TEA also only considers EOCs when determining a school’s progress score, TEA does allow schools to include the better of their student achievement or student growth outcomes as part of its letter grade determination. C@R gives separate grades in each of these categories, but counts both.

SBISD is a multiple measures district. While we do not base our own internal accountability on STAAR/EOC results alone, we believe it is confusing for a local non-profit to publish an A-F rating system that yields different outcomes and letter grades from the State accountability system.