Texas Border Business
| When: Thursday – March 28 at 3:00 p.m. |
| Where: South Texas ISD Rising Scholars Academy 151 S. Helen Moore Rd., San Benito |
South Texas Independent School District (STISD) Rising Scholars Academy (RSA) in San Benito will celebrate its recent designation as a Texas “School to Watch” (STW) during a campus assembly on March 28, which will include students, parents, and faculty and staff.
Leticia Menchaca, Schools to Watch State Director and Texas Association of Secondary School Principals (TASSP) Associate Executive Director for Middle Level Services & Corporate Partners; and Dr. Billy Pringle, TASSP Deputy Director of Business Operations, Professional Development, Governmental Relations and High School Services; will attend the celebration to address the RSA community and present the campus with a banner to commemorate the award.
The campus was informed of its designation by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform and TASSP earlier this spring. RSA joins approximately 60 other campuses across the state with this distinction and honor.
According to the Texas STW program, state leaders selected RSA for its academic excellence, developmental responsiveness, social equity and organizational structure and processes. In addition, RSA has strong leadership, teachers who work together to improve curriculum and instruction, and a commitment to assessment and accountability to bring about continuous improvement.
The STW selection process is based on a written application that requires schools to show how they met criteria developed by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform. Schools that appeared to meet the criteria were then visited by state teams, which observed classrooms; interviewed administrators, teachers, students, and parents; and looked at achievement data, suspension rates, quality of lessons, and student work.
Schools are recognized for a three-year period, and at the end of three years, they must demonstrate progress on specific goals to be re-designated. Unlike the National Blue Ribbon Schools recognition program, “Schools to Watch” requires schools to not just identify strengths, but to also focus on areas of continuous improvement; thus, the three-year re-designation.
Launched in 1999, STW began as a national program to identify middle-grades schools across the country that were meeting or exceeding 37 research-based criteria developed by the National Forum. The Forum developed a web site – https://www.middlegradesforum.org/ – that features online tours of schools, as well as detailed information about selection criteria used in the recognition program. There are now 17 states across the country with trained STW state teams, with more than 600 schools recognized nationwide.
RSA was recognized in Austin earlier this month at the Making Middle School Matter Symposium hosted by TASSP, and the campus will be recognized nationally with all the other recognized STW schools from across the country in Washington, DC, at the National Forum of Schools to Watch Conference on June 20-22, 2024.
