The Texas Education Agency (TEA) released accountability ratings on Aug. 14, for the 2025-26 school year, covering all public schools, including district, magnet, and charter schools. While accountability measures can seem complicated and sometimes political, they provide parents, taxpayers, educators, and policymakers with a clear and common way to see whether students are learning, improving, and ready for life after high school.
What are school and district accountability ratings?
Texas’ accountability system uses measures of student performance and progress to give each public school and district an overall rating, much like a report card. No single letter grade tells the entire story, but the ratings make academic results visible and help identify where schools are succeeding and where they are not serving students well.
How are ratings calculated?
The TEA evaluates schools and districts in three areas:
- Student Achievement: Performance on the state annual assessment, STAAR, and, for high schools, graduation rates and college, career, and military readiness.
- School Progress: Year-over-year student growth or performance compared with schools serving similar percentages of economically disadvantaged students.
- Closing the Gaps: Narrowing achievement gaps across different student groups.
The higher of the Student Achievement or School Progress scores accounts for 70% of the overall rating. Closing the Gaps makes up the remaining 30%.
A 90% or above is an A, 80%-89% gets a B rating, 70%-79% earns a C, 60%-69% is a D, and 59% or below earns an F. Ratings of A, B, or C are considered acceptable, while D and F ratings are not. If a campus receives an unacceptable rating for five consecutive years, the state must pursue either closing the campus or replacing the district’s elected board.
What do the 2025-2026 accountability ratings tell us?
There are two big takeaways:
- Texas schools continued to improve overall, with 25% of campuses earning an A, a slight improvement over 2025.
- Texas’ major urban districts also got better overall, but campus-level results show far too many D- and F-rated schools where students are falling behind.
- Austin improved to a B from a C, but several campuses have received unacceptable ratings for multiple years, putting the district at risk of state intervention.
- Dallas earned a B, improving slightly from last year.
- Fort Worth improved by a few points, staying at a C and remaining under state control.
- Houston earned a B and improved slightly overall, but five campuses received F ratings, compared with none last year.
- San Antonio earned a C and reduced its number of F-rated campuses to nine from 20, although many of those campuses remain rated D.
When does low school performance lead to a state takeover?
Texas law says that when a district has at least one campus that has an unacceptable performance rating for five consecutive school years, the TEA Commissioner must either close the campus or appoint a board of managers to oversee the district.
The goal is to quickly turn around student outcomes by putting in place new leadership and practices -before eventually returning control of the district to an elected local board.
Here’s what that looks like for districts currently under state control:
- Houston ISD has improved significantly under a state-appointed board and Superintendent Mike Miles since 2023. Oversight is set to continue through June 2027, but five campuses with F ratings this year could prolong state control.
- TEA intervened this spring in Fort Worth, Beaumont, Connally, and Lake Worth ISDs. Next year’s accountability scores will give us the first clear picture of improvement in student learning.
- Austin is the next major district to watch. Two middle schools – Burnet and Webb- have scored an F or D for five straight years, triggering the authority for TEA to intervene.
How can families learn more about their school and district performance?
We recommend three steps to help you understand what school and district accountability ratings mean for your child and what should happen next:
- Start with the results. Look up your school and district’s 2026 report cards at gov.
- Look beyond the letter grade. Ratings provide a useful starting point, but it’s important to understand what is driving the results. Consider asking school or district leaders:
- Which subjects and student groups are struggling?
- Is student achievement improving or declining over time?
- What support is available for students who are below grade level?
- What steps will school leaders take to improve results?
- Ask what happens next. Find out how your school or district plans to use the results to strengthen teaching, support students who are struggling, and improve student outcomes.
