Community and Student Engagement Ratings as Part of the State Academic Accountability System

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April 18, 2017

TO THE SUPERINTENDENT ADDRESSED:

Subject: Community and Student Engagement Ratings as Part of the State Academic Accountability System

This correspondence is to update you on new reporting requirements for community and student engagement (CaSE) ratings established by House Bill (HB) 2804 (84th Texas Legislature, 2015).

Since 2014, each school district has evaluated itself and each of its campuses in all eight components of CaSE and assigned ratings of exemplary, recognized, acceptable, or unacceptable. HB 2804 added CaSE ratings to the state academic accountability system. Under the requirements established in Texas Education Code (TEC), §39.0546, each district and campus must annually choose three CaSE components for this purpose.

Districts and campuses must report to the agency which three CaSE components will be evaluated and the criteria that will be used for that evaluation before the beginning of each school year. All reporting will occur through the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS)/Texas Student Data System (TSDS). Because current statute requires CaSE ratings to be used for academic accountability beginning in the 2017–18 school year, the first time that districts and campuses must report their three chosen CaSE components and the criteria for assigning letter grades is June 2017 as part of the Summer PEIMS Submission.

Each district must evaluate itself on the three selected components and assign a letter grade of A, B, C, D, or F for each and for overall CaSE performance. Each campus must also evaluate itself and assign a letter grade of A, B, C, D, or F for each of the three components and for overall performance. These letter grades will become part of district and campus state academic accountability ratings.

The new requirements for reporting CaSE letter grades are in addition to, not instead of, the requirements that have been in place since 2014. Each district must still report ratings of exemplary, recognized, acceptable, or unacceptable for itself and each of its campuses for all eight of the CaSE components. The table on the next page shows the reporting timelines for both sets of CaSE ratings.

The commissioner of education has proposed administrative rules regarding these new requirements. The public comment period for the proposed rules opened on Friday, March 31, 2017, and will close on Monday, May 1, 2017.

The proposed amendments, which implement the requirements by adding new subsections (j) and (k) to 19 TAC, §61.1023, are available on the TEA website. This webpage provides information about the amendments, as well as the text of the amendments. Public comments may be sent to rules@tea.texas.gov.

It is important to note that districts and campuses that do not follow the submission schedule risk receiving unacceptable state academic accountability ratings for overall performance and any domain that relies on CaSE ratings.

Please submit questions regarding the PEIMS/TSDS submission requirements to the TSDS Incident Management System (TIMS), which is available within the TSDS portal.  Please direct questions regarding CaSE reporting requirements to the Performance Reporting Division at (512) 463-9704 or performance.reporting@tea.texas.gov.

Contact Information
Texas Education Agency
Office of Academics
Penny Schwinn, Deputy Commissioner
Division of Performance Reporting–Shannon Housson, Division Director
Division of Performance Reporting–Jamie Crowe, Director
(512) 463-9704
performance.reporting@tea.texas.gov