The Austin school district is days away from learning whether three of its middle schools crossed the threshold that could ultimately shape the district.

As families await the Texas Education Agency’s release of the 2025-26 school accountability ratings, many are asking the same questions: How are schools graded? What do those ratings actually measure? And if another failing rating triggers state intervention, what happens next? TEA on Aug. 14 is scheduled to release the new ratings, the state’s A-F measure of academic performance for schools and districts that has come under scrutiny.

Under state law, those ratings can have consequences far beyond a report card.

For Austin ISD, the upcoming ratings represent a pivotal milestone as three schools sit one failing rating away from triggering a state mandate requiring Education Commissioner Mike Morath to intervene. If any of the three failing campuses — Burnet, Dobie and Webb middle schools — receive a fifth consecutive failed rating, state law would require action. But the ratings alone will not determine Austin ISD’s fate. In the months that follow, TEA would decide what form that intervention should take from the choices allowed under state law, including closing a campus and putting a conservator in place or taking over the district and appointing a board of managers.

Ratings have played a pivotal role in Austin ISD’s decision-making over the past year as mounting pressure from the state has moved district leaders to take dramatic, and at times unprecedented, actions. Seven of the 10 campuses that school board members voted to close in November were among the two dozen Austin ISD campuses on state-mandated improvement plans for the 2025-26 school year due to having received multiple consecutive failing accountability ratings.

Last month, Austin ISD leaders closed another of those campuses, Paredes Middle School, in a rare move just weeks before the start of the 2026-27 school year citing slow academic progress at the school and concerns about three consecutive failing accountability ratings.

How is a school rated?

Individual school ratings are awarded on an A-F scale and measure what students are learning, whether they are ready for the next grade level and how well the school prepared students for life after high school, whether that be in college, the workforce, or the military. Districts receive a rating using the same framework.

According to the Texas Education Agency, there are three categories that affect a school’s accountability rating: student achievement, student progress and closing achievement gaps:

• The first considers whether students approached, met or exceeded expectations on the STAAR standardized test. It also measures graduation rates and student readiness for life beyond high school.
• The second measures academic growth, student performance over time, compares the school’s performance to other schools with similar grade levels served and economically-disadvantaged student populations, and considers the performance of students who met end-of-course exam standards after having previously failed to do so.
• The third examines the school’s ability to ensure all student groups are successful, and includes standardized testing performance, graduation rates, progress toward English proficiency for emergent bilingual students and readiness for life after high school.

TEA calculates scores in student achievement and closing the gaps, then uses whichever is higher between academic growth and relative performance to calculate the student progress category. Student achievement or student progress, whichever is higher, accounts for 70% of the overall score, while closing the gaps makes up the remaining 30%.

Pedro Reyes, professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas’ College of Education, said the raw scores are translated to scaled scores that can be compared side by side using the same metrics. However, he said the TEA sets the metrics, which can change and drastically affect a school’s score.

Before ratings become final, districts typically receive an explanation of how the agency calculated the scores and have the opportunity to appeal.

Reyes said ratings serve as benchmarks to understand a school’s progress based on a set of standardized metrics, giving crucial information to parents and community members, who are served by schools and pay taxes that support a district financially.

“The issue I think sometimes for parents is that this is so complicated that it is sort of a challenge to form questions around it,” Reyes said.

Do accountability ratings work?

University of Houston Clinical Professor Samuel Brower said whether ratings work depends on how success is defined. Researchers, he said, continue to debate whether the A-F accountability system accurately captures what happens inside schools.

One challenge, Brower said, is state standardized tests cannot fully capture what happens in classrooms or reflect the work of teachers and communities. The exams can also present challenges for English learners and economically-disadvantaged students.

“When you are working with large populations of students at school sites that may be economically disadvantaged, oftentimes what we see is that the teaching can be extremely powerful. It can be just as good as you would see at any other school, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is fully reflected in one assessment,” Brower said.

He said TEA added measures such as closing the gaps and student progress to address some of those concerns, though researchers continue to debate whether they sufficiently account for the differences among schools.

Lower grades can also shape public perception, Bower said. A grade of a C or D may suggest to families that a school is under performing even when it may still be meeting some state expectations, potentially affecting community confidence and enrollment decisions.

Would another failing school rating automatically trigger a takeover?

Ratings often drive district decisions. During last month’s closure of Paredes Middle School, district leaders cited the school’s beginning, middle and end-of-year testing data. Based on that data, Superintendent Matias Segura said he lacked confidence the school could avoid unacceptable accountability ratings for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years.

For Austin ISD, the biggest question is not simply what letter grades Burnet, Dobie and Webb campuses receive, but what those ratings could set in motion.

The three middle schools are each one failing accountability rating away from triggering the state law that requires Morath to intervene. If one or more campuses reaches that threshold, the accountability ratings would not immediately result in a district takeover or school closure. Instead, TEA would determine in subsequent months what form its intervention should take.

Austin ISD would not be the first district placed under a board of managers. Eight Texas districts currently operate under state-appointed boards: Beaumont, Connally, Fort Worth, Houston, La Joya, Lake Worth, Shepherd and South San Antonio ISDs. Historically, state intervention has included closing chronically-failing campuses and appointing a conservator or appointing a board of managers. The commissioner also has authority to intervene for reasons beyond accountability ratings including financial accountability concerns, accreditation issues, special investigations, leadership problems or failures to comply with state or federal law.

Not every intervention follows the same path. Earlier this year, Texas declined to appoint a board of managers in the Wichita Falls school district. Instead, TEA closed the chronically-failing campus, approved the district’s plan to move students to a campus under the operation of Third Future Schools and appointed a conservator to oversee the district. Third Future Schools was founded by the educator who now serves as the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD under that district’s takeover. For Austin ISD, this month’s ratings will answer one question: whether state intervention is imminent. The bigger question, and one that may not be answered for months, is what the state decides to do next.