Houston ISD received an overall B rating for the 2024-25 school year, according to the “A-F” ratings released by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) on Friday.
The 2024-25 school year ratings were released alongside the delayed 2023-24 school year ratings, which had been kept under wraps by a court order after several school districts sued TEA. The ratings are one of several metrics used to decide whether or not the state takeover of Houston ISD, which began in 2023, can end. The end of the takeover would return power to Houstonians’ elected school board and the district’s superintendent.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath visited Jefferson Elementary in North Houston Friday. Jefferson Elementary brought its campus rating from a D in 2023-24 to an A this past school year.
No HISD campuses received an F rating. Morath called it “amazing” and said it represents a step towards ending the state’s takeover of the district.
“The district is extraordinarily close to meeting all of those metrics, but has not still met them,” he said. “We’re looking for an assurance that the multi-year unacceptable academic performance is a thing of the past. That may occur as soon as next year, given the progress that we’ve seen.”
In June, Morath announced that HISD would continue to be under state control for at least two years. During that same month, he also replaced four of the nine members on the district’s state-appointed board of managers. That board then unanimously passed a $2.1 billion budget and approved a five-year contract extension for state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles.
Of the 273 HISD campus ratings, 18 received a D rating for the 2024-25 school year, according to TEA. Of the 18 D-rated campuses, at least four of them have received a consecutive D or lower rating. During the 2022-23 school year, 56 HISD campuses had a failing rating, while 65 schools had a D rating.
HISD’s overall B rating for the 2024-25 school year is in line with the performance of other Houston-area school districts, with Katy, Spring, Conroe and Cy-Fair all receiving B ratings. Cleveland ISD, located northeast of Houston, was the only Houston-area district to receive an F rating for the previous school year.
Superintendent Miles was also in attendance during Morath’s tour of Jefferson Elementary and said the results of the campus ratings show that “zip code is no longer destiny in HISD” — referring to prior ratings having a disproportionately lower grade for lower-income schools.
“74% of all of our schools now are ‘A’ or ‘B’ rated schools,” Miles said. “It means we have way more kids, 70,000 more kids attending ‘A’ and ‘B’ schools than two years ago. More than 130,000 of our 170-some thousand students are attending ‘A’ and ‘B’ schools.”
Despite the improvement, Miles has faced continued pushback from educators, parents and community members. This has led to several protests against Miles and his administration due to increased staffing turnover and instructional changes.
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