_Section X - Preview of 2005 and Beyond_

This section provides information about future plans for the state accountability system to the extent these plans are known in the summer of 2004. The purpose is to inform educators in advance so districts and campuses can be adequately prepared for changes that will take place in 2005 and in later years.

Additions, deletions, and modifications beyond those discussed here are possible. State legislative action may also affect the accountability system ratings, reports, sanctions, and rewards. At this point in time, such action cannot be predicted.

The changes described below are by year for the years 2005 and 2006. The discussion of 2007 and beyond is grouped together. Changes described for any given year are based on a comparison to the immediately preceding year.

Accountability System for 2005

Texas Assessment Of Knowledge And Skills (TAKS)

Student Passing Standard. In 2005, students in grades 3-10 will be required to meet the panel recommended (PR) standards in order to pass each test. Grade 11 students will be required to meet the standard set at one standard error of measurement (1 SEM) below the panel recommendation. (If the calendar for phase-in of the student passing standard is changed, this schedule will be modified.)

SSI and Grade 5 Reading and Mathematics. In 2005 the Student Success Initiative will go into effect for the 5th grade. These students will need to pass TAKS reading and mathematics in order to be promoted to grade 6. The tests will be administered multiple times, as has been done for grade 3 reading. Results from both the first and second administrations of 5th grade reading and mathematics will be included in the TAKS reading/ELA and mathematics indicators, respectively. Note that prior year results cannot be computed to be precisely comparable, since there were not multiple administrations of fifth grade reading in 2004 - thus, any improvement calculations will be based on multiple administrations in 2005 compared to the single administration in 2004.

Required Improvement. Required Improvement for 2005 (and later years) will be developed in early 2005 following analysis of actual gains made between 2003 and 2004.

TAKS Cumulative Exit-level Passing Indicator. An indicator that includes the performance of subsequent passing scores for exit-level students who fail the first administration of the test will be explored for use in 2005 or later years.

State-Developed Alternative Assessment (SDAA)

SDAA II. Major changes are underway for state-developed alternative assessments. The SDAA II, an assessment better aligned with the TAKS, will be introduced in 2005 for grades 3-10. This extends the test to include grades 9-10 for the first time. Grade 9 tests will include mathematics and reading; grade 10 tests will include mathematics and English language arts (ELA). A new SDAA indicator based on SDAA II must be developed. Because 2005 will be the benchmark year, it may not be possible to include the new SDAA indicator in the state accountability system in 2005.

Accountability Standard. The standard for meeting ARD expectations will continue to be set locally, consistent with state statute. Additionally, discussions are underway concerning the possible use of a uniform state standard or improvement standard for SDAA II performance in accountability.

Completion Rate

Minimum Size. The minimum number of non-completers required for analysis of this indicator will decrease from 10 to 5 in 2005 for All Students and each student group.

Required Improvement. Development of a completion rate Required Improvement standard for use at the Recognized level will be considered for 2005.

Dropout Rate

Accountability Standard. The standard for attaining a rating of Academically Acceptable will become more rigorous, decreasing from 2.0% to 1.0% in 2005.

Minimum Size. The minimum number of dropouts required for analysis of this indicator will decrease from 10 to 5 in 2005 for All Students and each student group.

Required Improvement. Development of an annual dropout rate Required Improvement standard for use at the Recognized level will be considered for 2005.

Additional Features

Exceptions. The Exceptions Provision will be reevaluated in 2005 to determine if measures should be added or removed, adjustments need to be made to the number of exceptions for which campuses or districts are eligible, or other aspects need to be modified.

Underreported Students. In 2005, the count of underreported students that can prevent a district from being rated Exemplary or Recognized will decrease from 500 to 100.

Gold Performance Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment Standards. GPA standards for all but two of the 11 indicators will be revisited for 2005. The Recommended High School Program/Distinguished Achievement Program (RHSP/DAP) indicator standard will increase from 50.0% to 60.0%. The TAAS/TASP equivalency indicator standard will remain stable at 80.0%

Comparable Improvement. A methodology for determining Comparable Improvement (CI) will be developed in 2005. Standards will be set and campuses will receive acknowledgment on one or more CI indicators in 2005.

Adequate Yearly Progress

Alignment with State Accountability System. The state and federal systems will be further aligned for 2005 after design of the state accountability system is completed and amendments to the Texas AYP Plan have been approved by USDE.

Alternative Education Accountability Procedures

Accountability Procedures. Accountability procedures for alternative education campuses will be developed and used to issue ratings for these campuses in 2005. The following guidelines will be used to develop these procedures:

• The alternative education indicators must be based on data submitted through standard data submission processes (such as PEIMS) or by the state test contractor.
• The alternative education indicators will be appropriate for evaluating alternative programs offered on these campuses. For example, GED recipients may continue to be included in the completion rate indicator for alternative education campuses, even though these students do not count as completers for regular instructional campuses and districts after 2005.
• If possible, the TAKS Growth Index (TGI) will be used when evaluating alternative education campuses.

Registration. The registration process and eligibility criteria will be examined as part of the development process for alternative education ratings criteria.

• Identification criteria will be re-evaluated, including consideration of adding a requirement related to the percentage of at-risk students served on the campus.
• Populations served on alternative education campuses will be examined to determine if the accountability procedures should make a distinction between campuses that students attend by choice (such as dropout recovery programs) and campuses to which students are assigned (such as juvenile detention centers and private residential treatment centers).
• Opportunities to automate and streamline the registration process will be explored.

Districts will be informed of the standards, requirements, and dates for registration as that information becomes available.

Alignment With Other Systems

Rating Releases. Over the next few years TEA will explore the feasibility of further alignment of the different types of evaluations that are released by TEA (e.g. AYP status and School FIRST).

System Requirements. Over the next few years TEA will explore the feasibility of aligning the various system requirements so, for example, districts could hold one public hearing to meet the public hearing requirements under different systems.

Sanctions. Over the next year TEA will develop an integrated framework for administration of sanctions related to different systems such as the accountability ratings of Academically Unacceptable, school improvement actions under AYP, and interventions for Performance-Based Monitoring.

Accountability System for 2006

Texas Assessment Of Knowledge And Skills (TAKS)

Student Passing Standard. For 2006 students in all grades will be required to meet panel recommendation (PR) in order to pass the tests.

State-Developed Alternative Assessment (SDAA)

Required Improvement. Required Improvement for SDAA II will be developed following analysis of gains made between 2005 and 2006.

System Safeguards. SDAA system safeguard analyses will be added beginning in 2006. These will include analyses to identify excessive use of SDAA, excessive exemptions from the state assessment program, and other anomalies.

Inclusion of SDAA Campuses. Rating campuses that have only SDAA results will be considered.

Completion Rate

GED Recipients. Beginning with the class of 2005 (students whose cohort entered 9th grade in 2001-02), only graduates and continuing students (students who return to school for a fifth year) will count in the definition of high school completer for the accountability completion rate. GED recipients from the class of 2005 will not be considered completers. This definitional change will increase the rigor of the indicator beginning with the 2006 accountability system.

Dropout Rate

No changes are anticipated for this indicator this year.

Additional Features

Exceptions. The Exceptions Provision will be reevaluated in 2006 to determine if measures should be added or removed, adjustments need to be made to the number of exceptions for which campuses or districts are eligible, or other aspects need to be modified.

Underreported Students. In 2006, the percent of underreported students that can prevent a district from being rated Exemplary or Recognized will decrease from 5.0% to 2.0%.

Gold Performance Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment Standards. The RHSP/DAP indicator standard increases from 60.0% to 70.0%. Standards for other GPA indicators have not been determined for 2006.

Texas Success Initiative. A new indicator of college readiness, the Texas Success Initiative (TSI), will be used for the GPA in 2006 for the first time. The TSI will replace the TAAS/TASP equivalency indicator.

SAT. Changes by the College Board to the SAT assessments will require review of this indicator's definition and standards. These changes will first affect graduates in the class of 2006. These results will be used in the 2007 accountability system.

Incentive Program. If a performance incentive program is funded by the Legislature, the GPA system will be aligned, as appropriate, with that program.

Adequate Yearly Progress

Alignment with State Accountability System. A proposal for further alignment of the state and federal systems will be developed in 2006 after design of the state accountability system is completed and amendments to the Texas AYP Plan have been approved by USDE.

Accountability System for 2007 and Beyond

Texas Assessment Of Knowledge And Skills (TAKS)

Accountability Standards. The accountability standards will begin to increase in 2007. The standard for Recognized (for all subjects) will move from 70% to 75% in 2007 and then to 80% in 2008. Exemplary will remain the same, at 90%. In 2007, the Academically Acceptable standards will begin to increase incrementally over time until they reach 70% for all subjects. The timeline for increasing the standard for Academically Acceptable has not been determined.

TAKS Science. Beginning in 2008 science will be assessed in grade 8 as well as grades 5, 10, and 11. Decisions regarding the use of grade 8 science performance in the accountability system have not been determined.

SSI and Grade 8 Reading and Mathematics. In 2008 the Student Success Initiative will go into effect for the 8th grade. These students will need to pass TAKS reading and mathematics in order to be promoted to grade 9. The tests will be administered multiple times, as with the other SSI grades. Results from both the first and second administrations of 8th grade reading and mathematics will be included in the TAKS reading/ELA and mathematics indicators, respectively. Note that prior year results cannot be computed to be precisely comparable, since there will not be multiple administrations of 8th grade reading in 2007 - thus, any improvement calculations will be based on multiple administrations in 2008 compared to the single administration in 2007.

TAKS Commended. Measures that incorporate TAKS Commended Performance into the accountability ratings will be developed in 2005 and used for ratings by 2007. When this takes place, these indicators may be removed from the Gold Performance Acknowledgment system.

State-Developed Alternative Assessment (SDAA)

Accountability Standards. SDAA II standards for 2007 have not been determined.

Other Assessments

Proficiency Measure for English Language Learners. An indicator of English language proficiency for English language learners will be developed as a base indicator for state accountability ratings for use by 2007. The state indicator will build on the work done to define an annual measurable achievement objective (AMAO) required under Title III of NCLB, which incorporates performance on the Reading Proficiency Tests in English (RPTE). The new state accountability indicator will be reported in 2005 and accountability standards will be set following analysis of results.

Completion Rate

Accountability Standards. The standard will eventually increase to 85% for Academically Acceptable and to 90% for Recognized. The timeline for this change has not been determined.

Grade 9 in 2005-06. The class of 2009, which begins the 9th grade in 2005-06, will be the first entire four-year cohort to use the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) definition of a dropout in determining the denominator of the completion rate indicator. The use of this definition was mandated by the 78th Texas Legislature in 2003. It is anticipated that this change will significantly increase the rigor of completion rates throughout the state. Because students participating in off-campus GED programs will be considered dropouts, a larger number of students will be in the denominator of the completion rate calculation. The resulting rate will be used for determining accountability ratings in 2010. The definition of a dropout for use in the completion rate denominator in the accountability system for 2007, 2008, and 2009 has yet to be determined due to the redesign of the leaver data collection system currently in progress. See Table 10 below for more information.

Table 10: Completion Rate Transition

Dropout Rate

Accountability Standards. Annual dropout rate standards for 2007 and beyond will be determined when data are available to set the standards on a dropout rate calculated under the NCES definition.

NCES Definition. For the 2007 accountability system, the state accountability dropout definition for 2005-06 leavers will change to the NCES dropout definition. The most significant change in the definition is that students who leave school to attend off-campus GED programs will count as dropouts. Since the dropout rate indicator used in the accountability system is for students who drop out of grades 7 and 8 only, they are less likely to be affected by attending GED programs. However, the two definitions differ in other ways that could affect the values used for this indicator.

Additional Features

Exceptions. The Exceptions Provision will be reevaluated each year to determine if measures should be added or removed, adjustments need to be made to the number of exceptions for which campuses or districts are eligible, or other aspects need to be modified. The new English language proficiency indicator (see Other Assessments above) will be subject to the Exceptions Provision when it is added to the rating system. Once the assessment system is fully implemented and accountability standards stabilize, the Exceptions Provision will likely be phased out.

Longitudinal Underreported Students Indicator. A new longitudinal underreported students indicator linked to the completion rate calculation will be reported and may replace the current underreported students indicator in the accountability ratings process by 2009.

New Minimum Size Criteria

Student Group Minimums. Three of the four base indicators evaluate student groups in addition to All Students (TAKS, completion rate, and dropout rate). Additionally, all 11 of the GPA indicators used in 2004 evaluate student groups. In 2004, student groups are not evaluated if they have fewer than 30 students in the group, or if there are 30 to 49 students in the group and they represent less than 10 percent of the total student population. If they have 50 or more students, the group is evaluated regardless. Whether or not to drop the "10 percent or 50" component of the student group minimum size criteria will be explored further. If dropped, the rule will be simplified to include for evaluation any group with 30 or more students. The earliest a change would be made in the minimum size criteria would be in 2007.

Gold Performance Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment Standards. RHSP/DAP increases from 70.0% to 80.0% in 2007.

TAKS Commended. Measures that incorporate Commended Performance into the accountability ratings will be developed in 2005 and used for ratings by 2007. When this happens, these indicators may be removed from the Gold Performance Acknowledgment system. A replacement indicator for TAKS Commended performance on mathematics will be developed to evaluate student proficiency in algebra in middle and junior high schools.

Overview 2005 - 2009

The phase-in schedule for the accountability standards will be reevaluated annually; any changes will be announced at least one year in advance. In the table below all known changes to standards in any given year compared to the prior year are indicated in bold.

Table 11: State Accountability Standards through 2009

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