Every year, when the Texas Education Agency releases A-F accountability ratings for the state’s roughly 9,000 public school campuses, many of the same misconceptions resurface.
We’ve collected a few here and we dispel each of them with facts:
❌ Myth: All students have to pass STAAR for a campus to earn an A.
✅ Fact: In 2025, 71% of tested third through eighth graders at A-rated campuses met grade level expectations in reading, and 63% met grade level expectations on math.
Ratings are calculated across three domains: Student Achievement, School Progress (which includes Academic Growth and Relative Performance), and Closing the Gaps.
[For more information on how these domains work, click here.]
A campus’ overall score is built from the better of its achievement or progress score, plus how well it closes gaps between student groups. Pass rates alone don’t determine a school’s letter grade, and some elementary schools in Texas earn A ratings with less than half of students on grade-level in math.
❌ Myth: Campuses get less state funding if their ratings or test scores go down.
✅ Fact: A-F ratings are a transparency and accountability tool. A school’s rating does not decrease its state funding.
In fact, schools that chronically underperform (receiving 3 D or F ratings over 10 years) are eligible for additional state funding if they adopt evidence-based programs to support student growth.
❌ Myth: A-F ratings are simply a rebranding of STAAR scores.
✅ Fact: STAAR is an input, but it’s not the whole rating.
In 2025, only about one in three campuses earned their score primarily from raw STAAR performance. The rest earned ratings primarily through academic growth or how they compared to campuses serving similar students.
That’s because every campus gets the best of three different lenses on the same students:
- how many are on grade level (Student Achievement);
- progress made, even if students are not yet on grade level (School Progress: a student two years behind who grows one year still earns credit for the school); and
- how the campus compares to others serving similar populations (Relative Performance).
High schools and districts also factor in graduation rates and College, Career and Military Readiness.
The breakdown varied by grade level in 2025, too: elementary schools most often earned their primary score through growth, middle schools through relative performance, and high schools through student achievement (which itself includes CCMR, not just STAAR).
Two schools with identical STAAR scores can land on different letter grades. A school with modest STAAR scores can still earn an A if its students are growing fast or beating the odds. That’s the opposite of a rating that’s just STAAR with a new name.
❌ Myth: One bad A-F grade automatically triggers a school closure or takeover.
✅ Fact: It takes five consecutive years of unacceptable performance before the most serious interventions kick in for schools.
The state monitors this through a ‘consecutive unacceptable count’ that resets to zero any time a campus earns an A, B or C.
The escalation ladder is specific and gradual:
- after the first unacceptable rating, a campus must submit a Targeted Improvement Plan;
- after the second, it must develop and begin implementing a formal Turnaround Plan;
- the third and fourth years involve continued monitoring of that plan.
Only after a fifth consecutive unacceptable rating must the commissioner order either campus closure or the appointment of a board of managers to govern the entire district.
Public charter schools operate on a tighter timeline, as they are allowed three consecutive years of unacceptable performance before interventions are triggered.
❌ Myth: High-poverty schools can’t realistically earn an A or B.
✅ Fact: In 2025, 43% of high-poverty campuses, with approximately a population of 60% or more economically disadvantaged students, received an A or B rating.
Poverty may influence the challenges a campus faces, but it doesn’t determine how well students can perform.
❌ Myth: Charter schools are graded on an easier accountability system than traditional ISDs.
✅ Fact: The same statewide A-F manual and domain structure evaluates charter and traditional public schools.
The charter school system has a stricter intervention timeline. The accountability system only allows three years of unacceptable performance for charter schools, but allows school districts five.
Why this matters
A-F ratings exist to give parents, taxpayers and policymakers a clear, transparent signal about how schools are serving Texas students. That signal only works if the public understands what it actually measures and how it is working to hold schools accountable.
