AUSTIN – Last Friday, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released its long-awaited 2025 A-F letter grade accountability ratings to all of the public school districts and individual campuses across Texas.
In addition to the current ratings, TEA commissioner Mike Morath announced the release of the delayed 2024 ratings, which were made available following lawsuits that prevented their release.
“With the release of the 2025 A–F Ratings, we are reinforcing our commitment to transparency and to providing accurate, readily available information that helps every family understand how their school is doing,” Morath said.
The two years’ worth of letter-grade accountability rating releases comes after the release of the 2022-23 ratings in May and represents a torrent of public school accountability information for educators, parents and taxpayers, which had long been held in limbo. Part of the reason for the delay in the ratings owes to a lawsuit, on which about 120 school districts filed, claiming that TEA had not given them adequate notice before establishing more stringent college and career readiness metrics.
When the 2022-23 releases were issued, it was the first complete set of academic ratings made public in five years in Texas, due to ongoing litigation and pauses to the system that owed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Morath, in 2025, 1,208 districts and 9,084 campuses were rated, and of those, 24% of the overall districts and 31% of individual campuses improved their letter grades.
Most campuses maintained previous ratings, and only 15% saw a decline. Furthermore, as Morath noted, 43% of the high-poverty campuses in the state received an A or B rating, which proved “that demographics do not equal destiny.”
Of Tyler County’s five school districts, Chester ISD received the highest mark, with a B letter grade, which represents a combined 88 out of 100 in the scoring. Spurger and Warren received C grades (Spurger with a 79 out of 100 and Warren ISD with a 75) and both Colmesneil and Woodville districts received D grades, with a 66 and 67, respectively.
Woodville ISD curriculum director Ashley Weatherford said that the district has not had the chance to dive deep to see where the gaps are, but that she is “definitely not pleased with [the] scores.”
However, Weatherford countered that test scores are not a way to define the district, and WISD Superintendent Lisa Meysembourg said that the primary focus of the district is to prepare the students for life after high school.
The letter grade accountability system was passed in the 85th Texas Legislature, via House Bill 22, in 2017. The aim was to provide clear and consistent information on how schools are performing in three key areas, according to Morath. Those metrics look at student achievement; school progress and closing the gaps.
“A-F Ratings help educators and school systems celebrate successes and focus support where it is needed most,” Morath said, adding that the system balances rigor, fairness and transparency, with goals established for post-secondary student success.
Making the grade: How Tyler County’s campuses fared
Chester ISD – Overall B (88 out of 100)
Colmesneil ISD – Overall D (66 out of 100)
Spurger ISD – Overall C (79 out of 100)
Warren ISD – Overall C (75 out of 100)
Woodville ISD – Overall D (67 out of 100)
To see individual campuses, as well as districts’ metrics broken down, visit txschools.gov.
