HUTTO — The Hutto Independent School District board is considering joining a second lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency.
The school district is one of 120 that sued the agency in August 2023 to protest changes to the school accountability system, which is on an A-F “grading” scale.
Stricter college and career readiness benchmarks announced in January 2023 sparked the legal action. The school districts have argued in the filing the agency did not give enough notice before introducing the stricter standards to allow them to adjust, therefore affecting ratings.
“The (2023) lawsuit was primarily concerned with procedure,” Hutto Chief of Schools Cara Malone told trustees as she presented information for them to consider at an Oct. 10 workshop.
A Travis County state district judge sided with the school districts and temporarily blocked the 2023-24 ratings. The lawsuit is currently before an appellate court.
A redesign of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness launched a second lawsuit in August 2024. Over 30 school districts have joined over concerns about the validity of the test, as ratings are largely based on students’ scores.
Trustees could decide at their next meeting Oct.
24 whether to withdraw from the initial 2023 lawsuit and whether to join the second lawsuit.
“I did have an opportunity to talk to quite a few people about all of this. One of the themes that I saw was the idea of solidarity,” Malone said. “The idea that districts can choose to join together and say, ‘This isn’t right,’ and that there is some power in that. And so, that seems to be the reason some of the districts are joining, if that is helpful.”
Regarding the second lawsuit, the redesign focused on online administration and creating an automated scoring tool for the entire exam, including open-ended responses, which were previously graded by humans. The school districts say the artificial intelligence grading was the cause of low scores, not the actual performance of students or teachers.
Trustee Shara Turner provided some insight, based on her experience developing AI scoring tools. She said the tool used for the STAAR is logic- based, and is compared and matched to scores from teachers.
“I would just make sure that people do their due diligence to understand how accurate (the scoring tool) is,” Turner said.
Accountability grades were temporarily blocked again by a Travis County judge on Sept. 18. A trial is set for February 2025.
The grades are important to parents and, in turn, affect the schools, educators said.
Critics of the TEA system said low scores can cause parents to move elsewhere, affecting property values and student enrollment, and result in a loss of funding and resources for districts because those are determined by daily attendance.
In addition, schools risk being placed under state control if a district receives consecutive failing scores, such as what occurred in the Houston Independent School District.
However, the two parents at the Oct. 10 Hutto ISD board workshop meeting said they were surprised to learn about the situation, noting they had heard little of the situation in spite of their involvement in the school and parent community.
