This story has been updated.
The Southwest Independent School District is the latest to join a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency seeking to halt accountability scores from being released after sweeping changes were made to the system, which grades school campuses and districts based on standardized tests and other factors.
Changes to the test and the scoring system this year are expected to deflate scores in several areas, even in some cases where districts performed better, according to the lawsuit and interviews.
In a press release, SWISD said the changes were instituted after the STAAR test had already been completed and could result in the appearance of an academic decline.
“It’s not about the grades for us,” Superintendent Jeanette Ball said in a statement. “It’s the principle of the matter. It’s wrong. It’s unfair to make changes and not provide us ample time to prepare for such significant modifications.”
SWISD Board President Sylvester Vasquez said the move was in support of the district’s educators.
“We wholeheartedly support our teachers,” he said. “By joining this lawsuit, we want to demonstrate unity with our teachers. We believe it’s unfair to judge schools based on a single test administered on a single day.”
Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who is named in the suit, has said the changes are required by state law to keep up with growth and remain competitive.
“The state as a whole has gained nearly 30 percentage points in terms of the rate of kids that are prepared for college careers and the military coming out of schools,” he said in August. “Five years ago, we set the benchmark …much lower than [90%] because we were much lower than that as a state five years ago, but we have kept it steady, even though the state has improved.”
The lawsuit accuses the agency and Morath of violating the law by not providing the criteria to districts at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year.
District leaders from across Bexar County have criticized the changes and communicated to school boards and the public that the letter grades will be impossible to accurately compare to past years.
The district of about 13,000 is the first in the county to sign on to the suit, which has garnered support from more than 100 districts since being filed in August. Others in the region, including the Comal and Seguin independent school districts, also have signed on in recent weeks.
During an August board meeting, Seguin ISD Superintendent Matthew Gutierrez called the changes an “injustice to our schools.”
“It is not fair to change the rules of the game after the game has been played,” he said.
Gutierrez and others have also accused the agency of playing politics with the accountability system, with a special legislative session on school choice slated to begin next week.
“It is an effort to say and show that our public schools are failing and to push vouchers,” he said at the August meeting.
In addition to the legal claims, the lawsuit highlights pleas made by educators, school district officials and legislators to reconsider the plan.
The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent the commissioner from issuing performance ratings based on the new methodologies. It also requests a permanent injunction to prohibit Morath from using the measures, methods and procedures that were not provided to school districts at the beginning of the school year.
If the scores are released, districts could face funding and enrollment declines, according to the suit.
The agency, which declined to comment on ongoing litigation, has delayed the release of the accountability scores multiple times, citing in September the need to conduct “further analyses of the growth data to inform cut score.”
A spokesman told The San Antonio Report that the delays are not related to the lawsuit.
An updated release date has not been shared.
