A judge blocked Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath from changing the way the Texas Education Agency assigns schools across the state letter grades based on performance.
The ruling on the new academic accountability ratings came Thursday night when a judge granted a temporary injunction in a Travis County court.
More than 100 school districts sued the TEA over Morath's new A-F scale of grading schools that would take A schools and ins some cases turning their grade to a C.
For example, Dallas ISD estimated it would cause 42 schools in the district to drop two letter grades despite improving metrics on STARR and other measures of growth.
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The lawsuit claims the drastic changes were not properly communicated to districts ahead of time so that they could prepare and that the change came after a required deadline. Letter grades can impact schools in various ways including teacher retention.
Some superintendents also said it was the TEA attempt to make schools look worse to help pass school choice in the legislature.
Morath told NBC 5 earlier this year that the state normally makes small tweaks to the test each year, but superintendents are the ones who asked to do them all at once, and that's what he's doing.
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Either way, a judge in Travis County ruled Thursday night that Morath is not allowed to release the new grades, until that judge can make another decision in the case.
The Crowley Independent School District was one of the first districts to sue Morath. After the ruling, the superintendent told NBC 5 the judge's ruling was a big sigh of relief.
"What is really says is that our cause, our position is one that merit, that we simply want to know, kind of, what the rules are of the game before we play it," said Crowley ISD Superintendent Michael McFarland. "So I definitely appreciate the judge for seeing that we simply didn't have the information we needed so that accountability scores or rating should not be released until after we know what the rules are."
The Texas Education Agency released a statement about the judge's ruling that reads:
"This ruling completely disregards the laws of this state and for the foreseeable future, prevents any A-F performance information from being issued to help millions of parents and educators improve the lives of our students. The A-F system has been a positive force in Texas public education, supporting improved outcomes for students across the state, especially those most vulnerable. There have been many constructive conversations about the methodology with districts and among legislators. Though about 10% of our school system leaders disagreed with the methods used in A-F enough to file this lawsuit, the complete absence of public performance information means that 100% of our school systems cannot take actions based on these ratings, stunting the academic growth of millions of Texas kids."
For now, the judge's ruling takes A-F ratings off the table as lawmakers debate school choice.
A number of school superintendents, including a representative from Dallas ISD are expected to hold a press conference Friday in Austin.
