Texas A-F School Ratings Stay Flat as District Ratings Improve

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The Texas Education Agency (TEA) released its 2026 A-F Accountability Ratings on Friday, providing the latest statewide look at academic performance across Texas public schools and school districts.

The results tell two somewhat different stories. District ratings improved noticeably, with more districts earning A and B ratings and fewer receiving D or F grades. Individual campus ratings, however, changed much less. TEA rated 1,202 school districts and 9,105 campuses in 2026. Twenty-four percent of both districts and campuses improved their rating from the previous year, and 585 campuses moved from below an A to an A. Among campuses receiving an A-F rating, 85 percent earned an A, B, or C, which the state considers acceptable performance.

The results are encouraging in some respects, but they do not amount to a sweeping academic turnaround. Instead, they add another piece to a more complicated picture of Texas public education, one that lawmakers will have to consider as they prepare for the 90th Texas Legislature in 2027.

Texas District Ratings Improve as Campus Grades Stay Flat

The clearest movement in the 2026 Texas A-F accountability ratings occurred at the district level.

In 2025, 14 percent of rated districts received an A, 41 percent received a B, and 31 percent received a C. Another 11 percent received a D and 3 percent received an F. In 2026, A-rated districts increased to 17 percent and B-rated districts climbed to 47 percent. The share receiving a C declined slightly to 29 percent, while D ratings fell to 7 percent and F ratings to approximately 2 percent.

That shifted the share of districts receiving an A, B, or C from about 86 percent in 2025 to roughly 92 percent in 2026.

The year-over-year movement tells a similar story. Of the districts with comparable ratings, 284, or 24 percent, improved. Another 770, or 65 percent, stayed the same, while 127 districts, or 11 percent, declined. In other words, nearly nine in ten districts either maintained or improved their previous rating.

The campus results are less dramatic.

TEA reported that 24 percent of campuses improved their rating, including 585 that moved from below an A to an A. But the overall distribution remained relatively stable. Of the 8,545 campuses receiving an A-F rating, 25.1 percent earned an A, 36.1 percent earned a B, 24.2 percent earned a C, 10.4 percent earned a D, and 4.2 percent earned an F. Another 560 campuses were designated Not Rated.

That distinction is important. A district rating aggregates performance across a school system, while campus ratings provide a closer look at individual schools. Texas can therefore see meaningful improvement in district ratings without seeing the same movement across the statewide distribution of individual campuses.

The takeaway from the release is not simply that Texas schools improved or that they remained stagnant. District ratings moved noticeably upward, while individual school ratings remained comparatively flat.

How Texas A-F School Ratings Measure Performance

The current Texas A-F school accountability system traces back to House Bill 22 (HB 22), passed in the 85th Legislative Session (2017).

HB 22 substantially restructured the state's accountability system around three major domains and established the foundation for the framework Texas uses today to assign overall A-F ratings to districts and campuses.

Lawmakers made another significant set of changes in the 87th Legislative Session (2021) with Senate Bill 1365 (SB 1365). The legislation clarified how A-F ratings interact with state interventions, established how D and F ratings are treated for purposes of acceptable and unacceptable performance, and required TEA to publicly report the number of consecutive years of unacceptable performance for districts and campuses.

The Legislature revisited the system again during the second called special session last year with House Bill 8 (HB 8), a sweeping overhaul of state assessments and accountability. HB 8 retained the three-domain structure but made significant changes to the indicators used within those domains and placed new restrictions on how frequently the commissioner can increase performance standards. Beginning with the 2027-28 school year, scores needed to achieve performance standards generally may be increased only every fifth school year, subject to exceptions in the law.

HB 8 also begins Texas's transition away from the current STAAR assessment program toward what the legislation calls an “instructionally supportive assessment program,” with the transition scheduled for the 2027-28 school year.

For the 2026 ratings, however, the familiar framework remains centered on Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps.

Student Achievement measures academic performance and, depending on the campus, incorporates STAAR results, graduation rates, and college, career, and military readiness. School Progress looks at academic growth and performance relative to schools serving similar student populations. Closing the Gaps evaluates outcomes among different student groups and progress toward academic targets.

Those scores are not simply averaged together. TEA first determines whether Student Achievement or School Progress produces the better result. The higher score accounts for 70 percent of the overall rating, while Closing the Gaps accounts for the remaining 30 percent.

That structure provides useful context for another figure TEA highlighted in its release. Forty-nine percent of high-poverty campuses receiving an A-F rating earned either an A or B in 2026, up from 47 percent in 2025. TEA also reported that 396 high-poverty campuses earned an A.

School Progress is designed in part to recognize academic growth and relative performance rather than judging every campus solely on absolute achievement. That allows the accountability system to distinguish between schools where students may enter academically behind but make significant progress and schools where students remain behind without comparable improvement.

It also means an A-F rating should not be mistaken for a repackaged STAAR score. A campus can move upward because achievement improved, students made greater academic progress, gaps narrowed, or some combination of those factors.

The letter grade gives parents and policymakers a useful starting point, but understanding what produced it requires looking at the underlying measures.

STAAR Results Show Why the Ratings Are Mixed

The new ratings also fit with the 2026 STAAR results Texas Policy Research (TPR) recently examined, which showed considerably stronger movement in mathematics than in reading.

Texas students improved across several mathematics measures, while reading and language arts results were much less encouraging. That helps explain why the accountability release can contain legitimate signs of progress without supporting a broader claim that Texas public education has turned a corner.

Because the accountability system considers academic growth as well as achievement, improving mathematics performance can help lift Student Achievement or School Progress scores even when other subjects remain stagnant. The statewide A-F results and the underlying STAAR data therefore point in much the same direction: improvement is occurring, but it is uneven.

That is ultimately more useful for policymakers than focusing solely on whether the number attached to a school moved from 79 to 80 or 89 to 90. The more important question is what caused the change.

Failing Schools Can Put an Entire District at Risk

The stakes surrounding the Texas A-F school accountability system extend well beyond the letter grade displayed on TXschools.gov.

An unacceptable rating can begin a series of increasingly significant state interventions. TEA tracks consecutive years of unacceptable performance specifically to determine the school improvement interventions and requirements that apply to struggling campuses. For districts with chronically failing campuses, the consequences can eventually extend well beyond the individual school.

The current five-year threshold is itself the product of a relatively recent legislative change. Senate Bill 1365 amended Section 39A.111 to require the intervention after five consecutive years of unacceptable performance. The previous statute triggered the intervention after three consecutive years following an order to submit a campus turnaround plan.

Under Section 39A.111 of the Texas Education Code, if a campus is considered to have an unacceptable performance rating for five consecutive school years, the commissioner of education must, subject to other provisions of state law, order one of two actions: close the campus or appoint a board of managers to govern the school district.

A single campus reaching the five-year threshold can put local governance of the entire school district at risk. If the commissioner chooses the board-of-managers option rather than closing the campus, the intervention is not confined to the school that accumulated the failing ratings. The appointed managers assume the powers and duties otherwise exercised by the district's elected board of trustees.

Houston ISD provides the most prominent recent example. TEA installed a board of managers in June 2023 after years of litigation and intervention. The statutory academic trigger had been reached in 2019 when Wheatley High School received its seventh consecutive unacceptable accountability rating. TEA has also pointed to prolonged underperformance elsewhere in the district, including eight consecutive unacceptable ratings at Kashmere High School and 11 at Highland Heights Elementary before the board of managers was appointed.

The result demonstrated just how far the consequences of persistent campus-level failure can reach. Although the academic trigger involved an individual campus, the intervention replaced the elected trustees governing the state's largest school district with a state-appointed board of managers. TEA's intervention in Houston remains in place, with the agency continuing to monitor the district against criteria for eventually returning governance to elected control.

Marlin ISD provides another example, as well as a look at what can happen after a district begins improving. TEA appointed a board of managers in 2017 after the district accumulated five consecutive years of unacceptable academic accountability ratings. Continued poor performance subsequently brought the district's count to seven consecutive years. Marlin later improved, earning an overall B rating in 2022 and regaining its accreditation status. TEA began transitioning governance back to elected trustees in January 2024, with elected trustees gradually replacing appointed managers.

Houston and Marlin illustrate both sides of the intervention process. A board of managers represents an extraordinary transfer of authority away from locally elected trustees, but it is not necessarily intended to be permanent. The state can eventually return governance to elected officials when the conditions that prompted the intervention have been addressed.

The possibility of such an intervention helps explain why accountability ratings, and disputes over them, can become so consequential. An F is not simply a poor grade on a state report card. For a chronically underperforming campus, each additional year of unacceptable performance can move the district closer to a statutory choice between closing that school and placing district governance under a state-appointed board.

The 2026 ratings therefore matter not only for what they say about statewide academic performance, but also for identifying campuses moving toward, or potentially away from, those intervention thresholds.

Ratings Return After Years of Legal Disputes

That context also helps explain the significance of the litigation that disrupted Texas's accountability system in recent years.

Legal challenges prevented TEA from releasing ratings on its normal schedule, including the 2024 ratings, which were originally scheduled for public release in August 2024 but were delayed because of an ongoing lawsuit. Following a ruling by the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, TEA ultimately released the delayed 2024 ratings on August 15, 2025, alongside the regularly scheduled 2025 ratings.

The litigation was especially consequential because the state accountability system relies on consecutive years of unacceptable performance when determining escalating interventions.

The delayed release also meant parents and the public went without timely state-issued A-F ratings. When TEA finally released the 2024 and 2025 results together, the agency described the action as restoring public access to school performance information after the legal proceedings preventing the 2024 release were resolved.

The 2026 ratings are also still subject to appeal. State law requires the commissioner of education to provide districts and charter schools with a process to challenge an academic rating, including determinations involving consecutive years of unacceptable performance. The appeals window runs through September 11. Districts and charter schools may challenge their preliminary ratings, with final ratings and updated counts of consecutive years of unacceptable performance scheduled for release on December 11.

Required interventions do not necessarily wait for that process to conclude. TEA's 2026 Accountability Manual states that required interventions begin upon the release of preliminary ratings and may then be adjusted based on the final ratings.

That makes the accuracy, transparency, and stability of the accountability system especially important. For most Texans, an accountability rating may primarily serve as information about the performance of a local school. For a district with a chronically failing campus, however, the consequences can eventually include whether that campus remains open and whether locally elected trustees continue governing the district.

Texas Education Policy Should Look Beyond the Letter Grade

The release comes as Texas is already preparing for another round of education policy debates.

Texas Policy Research recently reviewed the TEA's 2025 Annual Report, which examined many of the same underlying issues, including academic outcomes, enrollment, teacher recruitment and retention, school funding, special education, and accountability.

More recently, TPR also examined the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office's (TREO) review of TEA, which identified outdated rules and raised broader questions about the regulatory structure governing Texas public education.

Those questions are relevant to accountability as well.

Parents need understandable information about how their schools are performing. Taxpayers have an interest in knowing whether the increasing resources devoted to public education are producing results. State policymakers also need a way to identify chronically underperforming campuses and determine when intervention may be warranted.

But a useful accountability system does not require unnecessary regulatory complexity. The 2026 Accountability Manual illustrates how complicated the system has become. Beyond the three headline domains are separate methodologies governing academic growth, relative performance, college, career, and military readiness, graduation, student groups, alternative education campuses, appeals, distinctions, and other factors.

The goal should be a system sophisticated enough to measure performance fairly but understandable enough that parents, educators, and taxpayers can determine what a rating actually means.

The accountability system itself is also preparing for another transition. House Bill 8 made substantial changes to Texas assessments and accountability that will begin taking effect over the next several school years. Among other changes, the legislation directs TEA to transition from STAAR to a new instructionally supportive assessment program beginning with the 2027-28 school year and revises several indicators used in the accountability system.

HB 8 also responded directly to some of the instability surrounding recent accountability disputes. Beginning with the 2027-28 accountability system, the commissioner generally may increase the scores required to meet performance standards only once every five school years. The law also requires advance reporting on proposed changes and their expected effects on district and campus ratings.

Those changes mean the 2026 ratings are both a measure of current school performance and one of the final accountability cycles before another significant restructuring begins.

That transition will become even more relevant as Gov. Greg Abbott's (R) Texas Classroom Commission develops recommendations ahead of the 2027 legislative session. As TPR recently reported, the commission is examining issues that include math and reading outcomes, classroom technology and screen time, teacher recruitment and retention, parental involvement, and other factors affecting student performance.

The goal should be a system sophisticated enough to measure performance fairly but understandable enough that parents, educators, and taxpayers can determine what a rating actually means.

What the 2026 Texas School Ratings Mean for 2027

The 2026 Texas A-F accountability ratings resist an easy headline.

There are legitimate reasons to view the district results positively. More districts earned A and B ratings, fewer received D and F grades, and only 11 percent of districts declined from the previous year. Hundreds of high-poverty campuses also earned the state's highest rating. But those gains should not be confused with broad improvement across every Texas public school. Campus ratings remained much flatter, reading performance continues to present challenges, and roughly 15 percent of rated campuses remain below the state's acceptable-performance threshold.

The consequences for those struggling schools also make the results more than an academic exercise. A campus that remains in unacceptable status year after year can eventually reach a point where state law requires the commissioner to choose between closing the campus and replacing the district's elected trustees with a board of managers.

That is not a story of widespread academic decline, but neither is it evidence of a statewide educational transformation.

Instead, the latest data leave lawmakers heading into 2027 with a more useful question: Where are Texas students improving, why are those gains occurring, and what is preventing similar progress elsewhere?

The A-F accountability system can help answer that question, but only if policymakers look beyond the letter grade to the academic outcomes it is intended to measure.

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