In language that occasionally touched on the biblical — as when he referred to the 5.5 million “souls” in the Texas public schools — Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath looked around the room at Jefferson Elementary in Houston ISD Friday saw that it was very good.
In town to help celebrate HISD’s marked improvement in school rankings from the state, Morath dropped in to Jefferson Elementary, the central division school that had a D rating in 2023, a C in 2024 and that skyrocketed to an A rating in just released 2025 preliminary assessments. (Districts have 30 days to correct any errors.)
HISD Superintendent Mike Miles offered an abridged set of slides (from earlier public reveals), demonstrating the better ratings scores that resulted in no F schools and a multitude of A and B schools. He called this the hard work of teachers and students and “the outcome of a rigorous accountability system.”
Agreeing with him, Morath said: “The improvements here are truly historic,”
Morath then turned to his own set of numbers showing 24 percent of districts across the state increased their ratings from the year before. A total of 757 campuses in the state moved from below an A to the A designation. HISD still has 19 D-rated schools, some of which were repeat low performers. Before there can be any end to the state intervention that has to be solved.
“This begins with a basic moral belief system,” Morath said. “And this moral belief system is predicated on the idea that all children, not just children from the right households, not just children from the right neighborhoods, not just children from the right cities, all children can learn and achieve at high levels when we as adults provide them the right supports.
“This is a moral belief system that our Legislature has codified into state law and that we actually have multiple acts of public policy to reinforce this basic idea.”
In pragmatic terms, Morath said that for instance third graders have times tables memorized by the end of the year.
The A -F system is a way to discover whether what the adults involved in education are doing what they should be for the children. Sometimes, he said, this reveals hard truths and are difficult to face “Where we have been weighed and measured and found wanting.”
“We don’t live in a utopia,” he said. “Some of our kids have significant struggles outside of school. The question is, what are we doing in our schools to raise them up, to protect them, to cocoon them, to give them the best academic experience that we can during the seven hours they are in our building?”
As a result, he said, in the TEA assessments of any school, they can look at how much the students have grown academically, instead of just where they are. Whichever metric produces the higher score is what is awarded to that school.
Asked about the probability that the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness would be scrapped in favor of another type of state testing, Morath referred to Sen. Paul Bettencourt’s (R-Houston) SB 8 that has already passed the Senate and will come up again in the second special session.
A release from Bettencourt’s office says that his bill would replace STAAR with three “support” tests taken at the beginning, middle and end of the year. Results would be delivered within 48 hours “and limits excessive benchmark testing to return classroom time to teachers in the BOY and MOY tests.” Bettencourt’s bill is identical to that of Brad Buckley, the House Public Education Chair.
The bill would also prohibit “taxpayer-funded lawsuits against state actions except in narrow cases.” Morath has said the shame of the lawsuits that were filed and kept the TEA from releasing its rating for more than a year is that the hiatus kept parents from knowing how their schools were doing.
However, any of the critics wanting a quick end to STAAR will have to wait. Morath referred to a three-year transition period, although he said his office has been working on alternatives to STAAR for several years.
And from the state:
