The number of Texas public schools that are failing dropped by half in the past year, marking the lowest rate of underperforming campuses since 2019. New data released by the Texas Education Agency on Friday show public schools have made overall gains in their state ratings, which measure how well they are educating their students. The TEA also released grades for the 2023-24 school year, which had been held up in court. Of 9,084 public schools in the 2024-25 school year, 23% got an A, 57% got a B or C, and 15% got a D or F. F ratings declined from 8% to 4%. About one in three campuses improved their score from the prior year.
Ratings for schools and districts largely depend on standardized test scores and are based on three categories: how students perform on state tests and meet college and career readiness benchmarks; how students improve on their academic skills over time; and how well schools are educating the state’s most disadvantaged students.
It takes five years of failing grades at one campus for a district to face sanctions. The state will order underperforming schools to shut down and replace a district’s democratically elected school board with state appointees when they reach that threshold — like what happened with the Houston school district in 2023.Struggling schools are inching toward those state sanctions. According to analysis from The Texas Tribune, the number of schools with consecutive years of grades deemed unacceptable by the TEA — a D or an F — jumped from 64 in the 2022-- 23 school year to 348 in the 2024-25 school year.
Ratings are based on student achievement, school progress and closing the gap in scores for specific groups of children. The first two cat egories count toward 70 percent of a school's score, with 30 percent on the closing the gap category.
Area schools standings: Bellville ISD - C Brazos ISD - B Columbus ISD - B Fayetteville ISD - A Flatonia ISD - A La Grange ISD - C Rice CISD - C Round Top-Carmine ISD - A Schulenburg ISD - C Sealy ISD - C Weimar ISD - B
