Texas judge temporarily blocks release of “unlawful” school accountability ratings – By Brian Lopez (Texas Tribune) / Oct 27, 2023
The ruling comes after dozens of school districts sued the Texas Education Agency, claiming the revised accountability system would hurt their ratings.
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A Travis County judge temporarily blocked the Texas Education Agency from releasing this year’s annual school ratings after finding that the state’s new rating system — which was to debut this fall — is unlawful and would harm districts across the state.
The ruling issued Thursday evening comes after dozens of school districts across the state sued the TEA to delay the ratings, claiming the state’s new school evaluation methodology would result in unfair drops in their ratings. The agency had already postponed a planned September release of the ratings until sometime before the end of the year because it needed more time to adjust scores under the new system.
The agency said it plans to appeal the decision by Judge Catherine Mauzy, who set a trial date for Feb. 12.
“This ruling completely disregards the laws of this state and, for the foreseeable future, prevents any A-F performance information from being issued to help millions of parents and educators improve the lives of our students,” the agency said in a statement.
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