For the second straight year, McAllen ISD has earned an ‘A’ from the state of Texas!
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The Texas Education Agency released results to all school districts and McAllen ISD earned the state’s highest grade.
“This result is the culmination of years of hard work,” Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez, Ed.D., said. “All our teachers, administrators, students, staff and parents have contributed to this outstanding achievement. We also appreciate the leadership of our Board of Trustees. We should all be proud.”
McAllen ISD’s overall scaled score is 93. A score of 90-100 is considered an “A.” Across the state, only 25 percent of public school districts and charters (301 of 1,201) earned the “A.”
The 85th Texas Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 22, establishing three domains for measuring the academic performance of districts and campuses. These are:
- Student Achievement
- School Progress (broken down into Academic Growth and Relative Performance)
- Closing the Gaps
Districts receive a rating of A, B, C, D, or F for overall performance, as well as for performance in each domain.
Based on performance in 2018-19, McAllen ISD’s grades in the domains were as follows:
- Student Achievement B (scaled score 89)
- School Progress
– Academic Growth B (84)
– Relative Performance A (92) - Closing the Gaps A (95)
McAllen ISD prides itself on being a district of choice for children in elementary, middle and high school. That includes:
- McAllen ISD offers STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math) in Pre-K-12, International Baccalaureate in grades 1-12, Advanced Placement courses, Career Technical Education in 14 career clusters where students earn professional licenses or certifications, four dual enrollment academies and an Early College High School where students can earn an Associate’s Degree before they graduate high school
- Offering International Baccalaureate Teaching and Learning Framework – elementary through high school
- Offering full day Pre-Kindergarten for qualifying families and by tuition for all families
- Offering a Dual Language program in elementary and middle school
- High schools geared with the capacity for students to graduate with up to any or all of the five endorsements offered in Texas (Business & Industry, STEM, Public Services, Arts & Humanities or Multi-Disciplinary)
- Offering academic UIL competition – elementary through high school
- Offering chess in elementary through high school (5 state titles since program’s inception in 2016. Nine teams qualifying for national competition in 2019).
- Offering robotics – elementary through high school
- Offering coding – elementary through high school
- Elementary music classes taught by teachers degreed in music
- McAllen ISD’s Career Technical Education Program offers more than 30 college certification opportunities through dual enrollment credit, more than 35 professional licenses and certification opportunities, affords career awareness and career exploration interest assessments from K-12, more than 20 programs of study, all aligned to 14 Career Clusters.
McAllen ISD also places strong emphasis on teacher training and development providing the support they need to ensure student learning. As the district continues to promote lifelong learning in students, it continues developing the skill sets and emotional intelligence of its educators. This builds a strong instructional core and sense of belonging since the development of high-quality educators is key to successful student achievement.
The Student Achievement category measures how well students performed on the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) for elementary and middle schools and End of Course (EOC) exams in high school along with how well high school students performed on college and career readiness measures plus their graduation rates.
School Progress is broken down into two sub-categories (Academic Growth and Relative Performance). Student Progress-Academic Growth looks at how many students improved on the STAAR performance in Reading and Math compared with the previous year. Student Progress-Relative Performance measures how well campuses and districts perform in relation to their percentages of low-income students.
The highest score from Domain 1 and the two sub-categories in Domain 2, in McAllen ISD’s case, a 92, is used for the calculation of the overall school progress score as per the Texas Education Agency 2019 Accountability Manual.
Closing the Gap measures how well sub-populations of students perform based on their race, income level, disability and other factors that might impact learning and is used for the remaining part in the calculation of the overall progress score.
The state legislature approved the new A-F rating system in 2015.
