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The Texas Education Agency (TEA) released the 2024 and 2025 A-F ratings for public schools and charter networks Friday, four months after the agency released the 2023 ratings.
TEA usually publishes academic accountability ratings in mid-August each year, but they were delayed in 2023 and 2024 pending the results of lawsuits.
Most San Antonio area school districts and charter networks fared well under the new ratings. No Bexar County school district was at imminent risk of a state takeover, but several charter networks received multiple consecutive years of unacceptable ratings, putting them at risk of closure.
The new A-F ratings also showed a clear pattern: Most San Antonio area districts and charter schools dropped a letter grade under the criteria adopted in 2023 and have stayed about the same since.
San Antonio’s largest school districts including SAISD, Northside, North East, Judson, Southwest, and Harlandale were all B-rated districts in 2022. Now, SAISD Northside, North East, and Southwest are C-rated districts.
Judson and Harlandale received D's this year. Edgewood and South San also received D's this year, for a total of four D-rated districts in Bexar County. SAISD received a D in 2024 before bouncing back to a C in 2025.
More than 100 Texas school districts sued the state in 2023 over changes to the criteria for the letter grades, arguing that TEA changed the rules too late for them to adapt, including a higher threshold for the percentage of students who graduate ready for college, a career, or the military. The students that threshold was based on had already graduated by the time TEA published the new criteria.
Another lawsuit filed in 2024 argued that the use of artificial intelligence to grade the written responses on standardized tests invalidated their results.
“Today marks a return to clarity and accountability. With the release of the 2025 A–F Ratings, we are reinforcing our commitment to transparency and to providing accurate, readily available information that helps every family understand how their school is doing,” Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said in a news release announcing the ratings Friday.
Mary Lynn Pruneda with the advocacy group Texas 2036 also applauded the release of the ratings.
“This performance data is critical for Texas families. Without this information, moms and dads have no way of knowing how their child's school is performing compared to other schools,” she said in a statement. “Parents have been kept in the dark for too long on their school's performance. They deserve timely, consistent information they can count on.”
At a recent education panel moderated by TPR, however, San Antonio area superintendents and lawmakers said the A-F accountability ratings are too reliant on a single high-stakes test: the State Assessment for Academic Readiness (STAAR).
“I know with our parents that the there is a loss of confidence in the accountability system. It's changed,” said Paige Meloni, superintendent of Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD. “The system is complex. It's hard to understand. Anytime we're going to look at STAAR, even as long as I've been at it, as a building principal, as a teacher, I have to get a refresher course every time.”
Meloni said Schertz-Cibolo instead tries to be transparent with families about what students are going to learn and uses diagnostic tools along the way to see if students are learning it.
“We use the STAAR test. I mean, it's an autopsy, really,” Meloni said, noting that the results come too late for teachers to make adjustments during the school year.
The district received a B rating this year. It was a C-rated district in 2024, and a B before that.
“I really don't want to sound like the excuse superintendent, but I do want to say, 'yes, there's a problem with the testing,' and 'yes, there's a problem with the accountability.' A letter grade is easy to read, but it doesn't say everything that's going on in that campus,” said Judson Superintendent Milton Fields when it was his turn to speak on the panel.
“Since COVID has been here, the amount of emotional support needed towards students is not measured in that letter grade,” Fields said. “And then also 70% of how the schools are evaluated in that letter grade comes from how they do on that day, on that test. A snapshot in time. Not this is how they started off the year, and look how much they [improved]. Now, there's some growth measure in there, but the majority is how they did on that test on that day.”
Judson received a 69% on A-F this year, barely missing the C rating. Judson was rated C in 2024 with a 70%, and it was a D in 2023 with 69% again.
SAISD Superintendent Jaime Aquino agreed with his colleagues that accountability should be based on more than standardized tests.
“We believe in holding ourselves accountable for student outcomes. Our students deserve nothing less than that. However, we also believe that we have to have an accountability system that is an intelligent one,” Aquino said. “A letter grade cannot capture the impact that we're making on students, families and our community.”
He added: “That is why at SAISD, because of the leadership of my board, we're taking control of our narrative. We're going to be rolling out this year a school performance framework that actually tells us a better story of the work in a school. It will include achievement, of course. It will include academic growth, but we also are going to measure student agency, staff effectiveness and development, school safety, social emotional readiness, equitable allocation of resources, family satisfaction and the strength of school and family connection, because that's what our families and our community has said is what they value in our school.”
SAISD brought its A-F rating up to a C this year, with a score of 72%. In 2024, SAISD received a D, with 69%. SAISD was rated C in 2023 too, with 70%.
The panel was organized by education advocacy groups Raise Your Hand Texas, Bexar County Education Coalition, and RootEd.
Part of the reason A-F accountability ratings are so controversial is that school systems face severe consequences if a district or campus is rated D or F for multiple years in a row.
Traditional school districts can have authority over their district taken out of local control if even just one of their campuses receives a D or F for five years.
Charter networks can lose their charter and be forced to close if they’re rated D or F for three years.
No San Antonio area school district has a campus with enough D's or F's to put their district at risk of a state takeover, but Edgewood, SAISD, Judson, and Northside all have campuses with three years of unacceptable ratings and could be taken over in 2027 if those campuses don’t improve.
East Central, Harlandale, North East, Southwest, South San, and Schertz-Cibolo also have at least one D or F rated campus.
Seven San Antonio area charter networks have multiple years of consecutive unacceptable ratings. Bexar County Academy and The Gathering Place both received their third D or F this year, and both recently closed.
There’s been increased political will in recent years to revise the STAAR test. Gov. Greg Abbott put “eliminating STAAR” on the agenda of the special sessions currently underway. A bill passed by the state senate during the special session that ended earlier on Friday would have replaced the STAAR with three shorter tests given at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year.
