Texas has spent the past decade retooling how it grades schools, most notably by tying ratings to whether graduates are “college, career, and military ready” (CCMR). The reality of what should be a broader definition of success is more complicated, according to the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) study from Rice University’s Kinder Institute.
Per the report, frequent rule changes, learning loss triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and a gap between equity and opportunity have contributed to the failure to close the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged students.
“College and career readiness policy matters because it defines how schools allocate limited resources. It dictates whether students have access to advanced courses, college prep opportunities, or career preparation programs,” said Gabriela Sanchez-Soto, a researcher with Rice University’s Kinder Institute and one of the authors of the study. “By defining what districts are accountable for, the Texas Education Agency is also defining what educational opportunities will be prioritized for our students.”
When did things change?
The research examines the evolution of the Texas education system, which has transitioned from a heavily test-based approach to the A-F accountability framework launched in 2017-18. This framework distributes the CCMR metrics across three domains: student achievement, school progress, and closing the gaps.
With the expansion of CCMR indicators, including tests, dual credit, industry credentials, and military enlistment, Texas took steps to make it easier for families to understand the ratings. However, advisory groups warned that building a system simple enough for the public and nuanced enough for very different campuses, from rural districts to alternative education centers, was a high-wire act.
HERC’s mixed-methods analysis, which combines a decade of legislative and agency records with district- and student-level data, highlights three key storylines. First, policymaking power was diffuse: lawmakers set direction, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) translated laws into formulas, and advisory committees supplied feedback.
Over time, those committees documented a growing disconnect with TEA on how their input was used, a drift that eroded trust and complicated transparency goals.
Second, designing a single system for multiple contexts often sacrifices clarity for comprehensiveness.
Third, the landscape was constantly in flux, with new indicators, a five-year “refresh”, and COVID-19, adding turbulence to implementation.
The data trends tell their own tale.
CCMR rates dipped immediately after A-F took effect in 2017, rebounded gradually from 2018 to 2023, but remain at or below pre-2017 levels statewide.
Non-metro/rural districts showed more volatility yet posted higher overall readiness rates than urban and suburban peers.
Equity was inconsistently centered in the machinery of accountability. The study finds that while conversations about fairness and subgroup performance occurred, “targeted equity goals” rarely governed final design choices.
Per the report, state accountability systems, despite their limitations, have been crucial in addressing racial and socioeconomic inequities in education. They hold policymakers and educators accountable and tackle disparities in education.
However, discussions on equity have been limited, appearing in TEA and TEA advisory meeting minutes only 10 times between 2015 and 2022. Not much was discussed on the unique challenges faced by students across demographic groups, like economically disadvantaged, non-emergent bilingual Hispanic and Black students in special education.
“Our researchers found measurable improvements in readiness for emergent bilingual and special education students,” said Erin Baumgartner, director of the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Research Consortium, which partners with local school districts to address disparities. “That’s a clear signal that when policy is designed to close gaps, it can actually make a difference.”
This disparity is evident in the results: emergent bilingual students and students receiving special education services made the largest gains in readiness, closing significant portions of their historical gaps. But for economically disadvantaged students, the gap with their peers has barely budged in a decade, even as readiness overall stayed flat.
“It does look bad that we have different [Closing the Gaps] targets for different races/ethnicities, but taking into consideration the limited resources for economically disadvantaged students seems reasonable,” said a TEA Accountability Advisory Committee member on Feb. 9, 2022.
Laws that played into it
A string of laws, including House Bill 5 (2013), which opened flexible graduation pathways, HB 2804 (2015), which laid the groundwork for A-F grading, HB 22 (2017), which restructured domains, and later measures linking funding to CCMR outcomes or adding guardrails, built the structure.
TEA then adjusted cut scores and indicators, including the 2023 A-F “refresh,” which tightened standards and removed some indicators. Advisory committees repeatedly flagged a problem with its public outreach, warning that changing metrics can undermine trust and push educators to spend time decoding rules.
“Subdividing student groups by their economically disadvantaged status” was “preferred” because “economically disadvantaged status is more important than student group or race,” according to a snippet from a TEA AAC board meeting summary from April 26, 2021.
Methodology
Methodologically, HERC’s team used statistics across 980 districts to understand the effect of the A-F shift (2017) and COVID-19 (2020), while controlling for demographics (economic disadvantage, race/ethnicity, emergent bilingual status, and special education). That approach strengthens confidence in the finding that system changes and the pandemic were associated with the initial decline in CCMR and the uneven recovery.
What would make the ratings both fairer and more useful?
The authors urge state leaders to formalize the development cycle, establish guardrails for how and when indicators are changed, implement phased rollouts, and publish the data and reasoning behind major revisions.
They also argue for embedding equity into every stage of design, expanding recognition of local pathways (dual credit, work-based learning), investing in targeted supports for historically underserved students, and funding research that ties indicators to real postsecondary outcomes.
