HISD announced yesterday they had set a record for the percentage of its schools ranked “exemplary” or “recognized” by the state, and the official release of the information today backed up the claim.

Last year 57 percent of the district’s schools were included in those two categories; this year it’s 73 percent.

The results:

Exemplaryย ย ย ย ย  84 schoolsย ย ย  31 percent
Recognizedย ย  116 schoolsย ย ย  42 percent
Acceptableย ย ย ย ย  49 schoolsย ย ย  18 percent
Unacceptableย  12 schoolsย ย ย ย  4 percent

Here, badly formatted by the district, is the list of exemplary schools.

There’s always a lot of criticism about how these rankings are achieved, and how districts and the Texas Education Agency do with statistics what bureaucrats always do with statistics — massage them to look good.

But let’s let HISD bask in their moment, for the moment. The TEA releases statewide stats at 1 p.m. today on their website.