Editor’s Note: This article is intended to explain how Texas calculates campus accountability ratings and does not evaluate or express an opinion regarding the state’s accountability system.
When Texas releases its annual school accountability ratings, it can be easy to assume the A-F grades work like a student’s report card. An A might appear to mean most students passed, a C that the school performed somewhere around average and an F that most students failed. But that isn’t how Texas school accountability ratings work.
A campus’s letter grade comes from a complex formula that considers much more than how many students passed the STAAR test. The Texas Education Agency looks at how students performed, how much academic progress they made, how a campus compares with schools serving similar populations and how different groups of students performed. Those groups can be based on factors including race and ethnicity, economic disadvantage, English-language learner status, special education status and student mobility.
Put simply, a Texas school’s A-F accountability rating is not its STAAR passing percentage.
How Texas School Accountability Ratings Are Calculated
The Texas Education Agency divides the accountability system into three major areas, known as domains: Student Achievement, School Progress and Closing the Gaps. Each domain looks at a campus from a different perspective and answers a different question about how the school and its students are performing.
Understanding those three areas is important because the final letter grade does not come from any single measurement. Instead, several different calculations eventually come together to produce the overall campus rating.
Student Achievement: How Did Students Perform?
Student Achievement is probably the portion of the Texas school accountability system that most closely resembles what people expect from a school rating. For elementary and middle schools, it looks primarily at student performance on STAAR assessments.
However, Texas does not simply count how many students passed. STAAR results are divided into performance levels, including Approaches Grade Level, Meets Grade Level and Masters Grade Level, and those different levels are considered when calculating a school’s Student Achievement score.
At the high school level, the calculation becomes even more complicated. Graduation rates and measures of College, Career and Military Readiness, commonly known as CCMR, can also be included in determining Student Achievement.
School Progress: Are Students Improving?
School Progress asks a different question: Are students making academic progress? This distinction is important because a student’s achievement level and academic growth are not necessarily the same thing.
Consider a student who begins the year well below grade level. At the end of the year, that student may still be behind academically, but he or she may have made significant progress. The Texas accountability system gives schools credit for that academic growth rather than looking only at where the student finished.
School Progress also considers Relative Performance, which compares a campus with schools serving similar percentages of economically disadvantaged students. Texas calculates Academic Growth and Relative Performance and uses the better result for the campus’s School Progress score.
This means two schools with similar STAAR achievement results can still receive different School Progress scores. One school’s students may have demonstrated greater academic growth, or the campus may have performed differently when compared with schools serving similar populations.
Closing the Gaps: How Did Different Student Groups Perform?
Closing the Gaps adds another layer to Texas school accountability ratings. Rather than looking at all students only as one large group, the state also examines how different groups of students are performing.
Those groups include students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, economically disadvantaged students, emergent bilingual students, students receiving special education services and certain highly mobile students. Texas evaluates seven racial and ethnic groups: African American, American Indian, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, White and students of two or more races.
For the 2026 accountability system, Closing the Gaps includes results for all students as well as the two lowest-performing racial or ethnic groups from the previous year and a group Texas calls the high-focus group. The high-focus group combines several student populations, including economically disadvantaged students, emergent bilingual students, students receiving special education services and certain highly mobile students.
As a result, race and ethnicity can play a role in a school’s accountability rating, but that does not mean Texas simply assigns one race more points or weight than another. Instead, the system identifies a campus’s lowest-performing racial or ethnic groups and specifically considers their performance when calculating Closing the Gaps.
This is another reason two schools with similar overall STAAR results can receive different accountability ratings. The overall performance of the student body matters, but so does the performance of particular groups within that student population.
How the Final A-F School Rating Is Calculated
After the individual domains have been calculated, Texas still has to turn those results into one overall campus score. The final calculation is actually one of the easier parts of the system to understand.
Texas compares Student Achievement and School Progress and uses whichever score is higher. That score accounts for 70 percent of the school’s overall accountability rating, while Closing the Gaps accounts for the remaining 30 percent.
For example, suppose a school receives the following scores:
- Student Achievement: 76
- School Progress: 88
- Closing the Gaps: 82
Because the School Progress score of 88 is higher than the Student Achievement score of 76, Texas would use the 88 for the 70-percent portion of the calculation. Seventy percent of 88 is 61.6, while 30 percent of 82 is 24.6. Combined, the campus would receive an overall score of approximately 86.
Here is where the distinction becomes especially important: An 86 accountability score does not mean 86 percent of the school’s students passed STAAR. The 86 is the result of a formula that includes multiple measurements of student achievement, academic growth and the performance of different student groups.
The accountability system also contains additional rules that can limit a campus’s overall rating when the campus performs poorly in several areas. Therefore, even the basic 70/30 calculation does not necessarily tell the entire story in every situation.
What Does a Texas School’s A-F Rating Really Mean?
A Texas school accountability rating provides one overall measurement of a campus’s performance under the state’s accountability system. It does not, by itself, tell parents or community members how many students passed STAAR or how many students are performing at grade level.
A school dropping from a B to a C does not necessarily mean more students failed STAAR. Likewise, a school moving from a C to a B does not necessarily mean significantly more students passed. Academic growth, student demographics, the performance of individual student groups, English-language proficiency, special education populations, graduation rates, college and career readiness and other measures can all affect the final rating.
That is why the letter grade beside a school’s name is only part of the story. To understand why a campus received its rating — or why that rating changed from one year to another — parents and community members need to look at the Student Achievement, School Progress and Closing the Gaps scores behind the final grade.
Ultimately, Texas school accountability ratings are not simple pass-or-fail grades. They are the final result of a complex accountability system that uses several different measurements to evaluate student achievement, academic progress and campus performance.
Sources and Further Reading
Information in this article is based on materials published by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) regarding the 2026 A–F Accountability Rating System.
- 2026 Accountability Manual — Texas Education Agency — The official TEA manual detailing how the 2026 A–F accountability system is calculated, including Student Achievement, School Progress, Closing the Gaps and the formula used to determine overall campus ratings.
- 2026 Accountability Rating System — Texas Education Agency — TEA’s main resource page for the 2026 accountability system, providing the framework, methodology and supporting documents used to determine district and campus ratings.
- How Accountability Ratings Work — Texas Education Agency — A more general explanation of how Texas evaluates schools using the three accountability domains and combines those measurements into an overall A–F rating.
- STAAR Performance Standards — Texas Education Agency — Explains the STAAR performance levels, including Did Not Meet, Approaches, Meets and Masters Grade Level, and helps distinguish an individual student’s STAAR performance from a campus’s overall accountability rating.
- Final A–F Accountability Rating System Manual for 2026 — Texas Education Agency — TEA’s official announcement and explanation of the final 2026 accountability manual, including the state’s goals for measuring academic performance and addressing achievement gaps among student populations.
Texas Education Agency sources:
- Texas Education Agency — 2026 Accountability Manual — The complete state manual governing the 2026 accountability ratings, including Student Achievement, School Progress, Closing the Gaps and calculation of overall ratings.
- Texas Education Agency — 2026 Accountability Rating System — TEA’s central resource page for the 2026 accountability system, including the accountability framework, explanatory materials, methodology and related resources.
- Texas Education Agency — How Accountability Ratings Work — TEA’s overview explaining the three accountability domains: Student Achievement, School Progress and Closing the Gaps.
- Texas Education Agency — STAAR Performance Standards — Explains the STAAR performance categories of Masters Grade Level, Meets Grade Level, Approaches Grade Level and Did Not Meet Grade Level.
- Texas Education Agency — Final A–F Accountability Rating System Manual for 2026 — TEA’s official notice regarding adoption of the 2026 accountability manual and explanation of the purpose and structure of the A–F system.
