Texas on Thursday released its first official grades for school campuses based on how well they are educating children. More than half received A's and B's.

Texas rolled out the new A-F academic accountability system last year for school districts. This is the first time individual campuses receive official letter grades, which are largely based on how well students performed on the STAAR tests.

Nearly 20 percent of all Texas campuses earned an A and 37 percent earned a B. Only 4.5 percent received an F, according to the preliminary ratings.

Dallas ISD had 29 campuses that earned an A; 102 received a B. Eight earned an F, up from four schools that failed accountability standards last year, receiving the former "improvement required" label. The Fort Worth school district had 11 schools earn an A; 30 earned a B; and 18 received an F.

Texas education commissioner Mike Morath said the new grades will help communities better distinguish between good and great schools. The system is also designed so that educators can more easily identify where the most critical needs are and what successful approaches can be copied, he said.

"It's a lot of work that goes into helping the next generation of Texas kids have it better than the last," he said.

Overall, Texas saw improvements in ratings with the number of districts and charter school operators earning an A nearly doubled, from 153 to 301.

And some of the area's lowest-rated districts last year received better grades this time. Ferris in Ellis County jumped from a D to a B. The Arlington, Cedar Hill and Lancaster districts improved from C's to B's.

The DeSoto school district, which recently laid off teachers and cut academic programs amid financial struggles, rose from a D to a C grade. Two campuses in that district earned F's — DeSoto East Middle and Northside Elementary schools. To save money, DeSoto officials will close Northside for at least two years.

Three area districts and charter operators received an overall grade of F: Ellis County's Milford ISD, Dallas County's Lumin Education, and Johnson County's Kauffman Leadership Academy.

Pending a successful appeal, Kauffman Leadership Academy has missed accountability standards for the past three years and must close its doors.

Meanwhile, a handful of area districts slipped. Both Keller and McKinney school districts dropped from an A to a B.

Morath praised the gains seen this year but noted that student performance overall has only ticked up slightly, particularly in areas such as college readiness.

"We could, in public education, execute every reform needed to transform the lives of children; execute those reforms with perfection; and complete them all tomorrow," Morath said. "And it would still take about a decade for anyone to notice. ... There's a lot of work that we have to do to improve results for kids."

Because achievement has been so lackluster in recent years, the state has set performance indicators to where schools can earn an A if about 60 percent of students are on track to performing at grade level.

Those area districts earning top marks again this year included the typically high-performing districts of Plano, Frisco and Highland Park. As it did last year, Lovejoy led the pack among traditional ISDs, receiving a district score of 98.

More than half of all districts and charter operators — 56.3 percent — earned a B, including Dallas, Irving and Grand Prairie. And though Fort Worth saw improvement, that district maintained its C grade, falling just short of a B.

Dallas, which has been hailed as a model for academic gains among state leaders, did see a slip in campus performance, in part because of their own local accountability system. This year’s scores were the first to incorporate local scores — created and submitted to the state by the district — into the overall grades. DISD was one of the few districts in Texas to participate in that program.

Last year, DISD had the most schools of any district that scored at 90 or above, which would have been an A grade, at 60 campuses. An additional 21 DISD schools would have made an A if not for the local accountability calculation, including heralded campuses such as the Travis Talented and Gifted Magnet and Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy.

Even so, Dallas ISD's district score improved, budging up five points to an overall grade of 86.

The district’s superintendent, Michael Hinojosa, said that while he was pleased with the gains made by DISD, “it’s never a banner day when you have some schools that fall back.”

And some of those schools fell hard. Roger Q. Mills Elementary, a school that had formerly been in the district’s turnaround program, nearly made an A in 2018, with a 89. Mills received a 52 this year.

“We’re really good at getting them out [of failing status],” Hinojosa said. “But we’re not really good at keeping them from falling back.”

Only one DISD campus had failing marks for back-to-back years: the Patton Jr. Academic Center, an alternative high school for over-age and under-credited students.

The district is in the process of shuttering that building, Hinojosa said, and instead will be using a satellite system of five traditional high schools — South Oak Cliff, Pinkston, Hillcrest, Skyline and Spruce — to reach those students.

A new way of grading

Supporters of the new letter grades say they offer families more transparency about how their schools are doing than the previous system, which amounted to a pass/fail designation.

But school leaders have long opposed the new A-F accountability system saying it doesn't truly capture what's happening in schools or the challenges educators face.

Critics have worried that letter grades could further stigmatize schools in poorer areas when labeling them as failing because such students are more likely to struggle academically because of limited resources, trauma, housing instability and other reasons.

But Morath said the system has been designed to give schools credit for making progress. Statewide, 296 high-poverty schools earned A ratings.

During a news conference in Irving, part of a three-city tour across the state Thursday, Morath singled out one of those schools for praise: Irving ISD’s Brandenburg Elementary.

1 / 2Texas education commissioner Mike Morath speaks to the media and educational leaders regarding the state's A-F accountability ratings at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019. (Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer) 2 / 2Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick congratulates Irving ISD superintendent Magda Hernandez on her district's accountability ratings during a news conference at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019. (Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

The school was one of 68 campuses in the state to climb from a C to an A, and Brandenburg accomplished this with a student body that was 73 percent economically disadvantaged.

“These educators start the day and end the day with the belief that all children can learn and achieve at high levels,” Morath said. “Brandenburg Elementary is proof positive that poverty is not destiny.”

Brandenburg principal NeTassha Rendon said the gains were made by focusing on student growth, using instructional coaching, data analysis and weekly intervention planning with her staff to make it happen. Last year, Rendon — who was then in her first year at the campus — and her administrative staff set out on a two-year plan to improve to an A, she said.

They hit that goal in one year.

“We noticed in January, the goals and gains we were making, [and we said] we can do this,” Rendon said. “When we found out we made the A — happy tears.”

State officials have been tweaking what the new system would look like since lawmakers enacted the A-F accountability ratings in 2015.

Schools and districts are graded in three main areas: student achievement, school progress and "closing the gaps."

The bulk of their grade, 70 percent, is based on student achievement or school progress, whichever is higher. For high schools and districts as a whole, these two areas include STAAR achievement test performance, graduation rates and how prepared students are for college, a career or the military based on related exams and enrollment.

The remaining 30 percent is based on how well schools are closing gaps among various subgroups of students, such as those from low-income families, in special education programs or from various racial backgrounds.

The grades are preliminary. School officials can appeal their scores through the Texas Education Agency. State academic accountability ratings are typically finalized in the winter.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who joined Morath at his news conferences in San Antonio, Irving and Aldine — a Houston suburb — said getting the A-F scale through the Legislature was one of his proudest accomplishments.

Much like Friday night football, schools want to show their work, and avoid a D or F, he said.

"Quite frankly, there's nothing more American than competition," Patrick said.

The stakes are particularly high in Houston ISD, which is facing a state takeover because of some chronically failing schools and an audit critical of how the district is managed. Morath, who is expected to make a decision on whether to replace the HISD board, did not answer questions about that district’s fate during a Houston visit Thursday, according to the Houston Chronicle.