HISD earns passing grade

Elementary ratings improve, district striving to be better

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has rated the Hutto Independent School District (HISD) academically acceptable as part of the 2008 school accountability ratings.

The agency released the preliminary ratings Friday, Aug. 1.

The agency’s highest possible rating is exemplary, followed by recognized, academically acceptable, and academically unacceptable.

Each individual campus within HISD also received the rating of academically acceptable, with the exception of Hutto Elementary School, which improved to recognized status.

Nadine Johnson Elementary improved upon last year’s TEA rating of academically unacceptable.

HISD Superintendent David Borrer said while the district can be proud of its achievements, he sees the ratings as a call to action.

“While we’re pleased that we made some major gains, particularly in science, ... our goals are still to be a recognized and exemplary district.”

The ratings show improvements district-wide, though closer examination reveals an achievement gap between subsets of students. Borrer said the district’s goal is to make “scores higher and gaps tighter.”

“We’re still concerned about our Hispanic student population. We aren’t seeing the gains we want to see in math and science. The same [is true] in our African-American population,” Borrer said. “There’s too many gaps between those groups and our white students.”

In 2006, every campus in Hutto, as well as the district as a whole, was rated academically acceptable.

“We do know where we need to do our work,” he said. “We’re formulating plans to really impact the areas where we need improvement [in order to] close the achievement gap.”

As these results are only preliminary, campuses and districts still have the option to appeal their rating to the TEA.

Accountability ratings are based primarily on results from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests given to all students in Texas schools in April of this year.

For high school ratings, completion rates are also taken into account. Completion rates are calculated by determining the percentage of students who either graduate or receive a GED within four years of beginning high school. A 75 percent completion rate is the minimum acceptable rating used by the TEA.

This year, districts were given a waiver from having their dropout rates taken into their accountability ratings. Nevertheless, Hutto’s dropout rate would not have adversely affected this year’s rating.

The TEA plans to take dropout rates into account in next year’s ratings.