If you have ever seen a Texas school described as an A school or a D district and wondered where that letter comes from, this is the system behind it. The state grades every public district and school from A to F once a year, and while the grade leans heavily on standardized test scores, the formula is more involved than a simple test average. Here is how it actually works.
The TLDR version: Texas rates schools and districts through three domains, built mostly on STAAR results plus graduation and readiness measures, then combines them into a single 0 to 100 score that becomes a letter grade. The system was created in 2017 under House Bill 22, and every rating is public at TXschools.gov, where you can search by address and compare schools side by side.
The three things it measures
Every rating is built from three domains, and understanding them is most of understanding the system.
Student Achievement is the raw-performance domain. For elementary and middle schools it is essentially STAAR performance, the share of students who reach the Approaches, Meets, and Masters levels on the state tests. For high schools and districts it adds two more things: the graduation rate, and College, Career, and Military Readiness, which credits students for outcomes like passing an AP exam, earning an industry certification, completing dual-credit courses, or enlisting in the military. This is the domain that most resembles what people picture when they think of a school rating.
School Progress is the domain that tries to be fairer, and it has two parts. The first is academic growth: how many students improved by at least a year's worth of learning on STAAR, or stayed on track, regardless of where they started. The second is relative performance: how a school's results compare with other schools that serve a similar share of economically disadvantaged students. That second piece matters, because it is how a high-poverty school can post a strong rating. It is being measured against schools with similar demographics, not against wealthy suburbs.
Closing the Gaps is the equity domain. It breaks results down by student group, including race and ethnicity, low-income status, English learners, and students in special education, and checks each group against state targets. A school can post good overall numbers and still lose ground here if one group is being left behind, which is the point. This domain aligns Texas with federal requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
How the letter grade is calculated
Here is where the three domains become one letter. The state does not simply average them. It takes the better of a school's Student Achievement or School Progress score, whichever is higher, and counts that as 70% of the total. Closing the Gaps makes up the other 30%. Those combine into a score from 0 to 100, which maps onto the letter grades: 90 to 100 is an A, 80 to 89 a B, 70 to 79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and 59 or below an F.
Taking the better of Achievement or Progress is a deliberate design choice. It means a school that is not posting high absolute scores can still earn a solid grade if its students are growing quickly, and a school with strong scores is not punished if its growth number is lower. Districts and individual schools are each rated on this same scale, and a district's rating reflects the performance of the schools inside it.
How to read a rating, and what it misses
The system is genuinely more thoughtful than a bare test-score ranking, because the growth and relative-performance pieces are built to credit schools that move students forward from a tough starting point. That is why, in any given year, some schools where nearly every student is low-income still earn A ratings.
Still, keep the limits in mind. The whole thing rests on STAAR, so a school's rating rises and falls with a single set of tests, and test scores track household income closely no matter how the formula is adjusted. A rating is a useful signal about whether a school is generally strong, struggling, or improving, but it is not a full account of a school's culture, safety, teaching, or fit for your particular child. It also arrives with a lag, and the ratings themselves were delayed for several years by lawsuits before returning to a normal schedule with the 2026 release. Treat the letter as a starting point, then look underneath it.
The practical move is to pull the actual data. Look up your district and schools at TXschools.gov, and read the domain scores, not just the letter, since a B built on strong growth tells a different story than a B built on high absolute scores in a wealthy zone. Our guide on how school ratings actually work covers what these grades capture in general, how to read your child's state test scores unpacks the STAAR results underneath, and if you are comparing places to live, which Texas counties have the best schools puts the ratings in context.
Sources
Texas Education Agency: How Accountability Ratings Work
Texas Education Agency: accountability and graduation resources
Context from allk12's analysis of Texas school data, 2026.
