District Nearly Doubles Total of Exemplary Schools Underscoring the A in AISD

The population of Austin ISD’s A-grade schools jumped to an all-time high of 40 campuses, including six elementary schools that made the leap during a pandemic from a C-grade to earning the state’s top mark from the state’s accountability system.

From the south to the north and well into the east, 20 campuses vaulted either one or two letter grades into an overall A grade for 2022, according to data released this month by the Texas Education Agency. That translates into an 82% increase in exemplary schools from the district’s tally of 22 in 2019.

Austin ISD principals from the newly minted A-grade campuses stressed the importance of dedicated staff, flexibility, and a commitment to connecting with teachers and students as part of the secret sauce in making the academic leap in the middle of a pandemic that imposed challenges on classroom teaching and community connectivity more broadly.

Casey Elementary School Principal Lina Villarreal pointed to the creation of a strong climate and culture with staff as being a key part of the school’s 22-point leap to an overall A grade with a score of 92.

“We support every student and every teacher every day in whatever way we can,” said Casey Elementary School Principal Lina Villarreal. “This means supporting their social-emotional well-being as well as getting to know everyone individually.” 

The South Austin school is one of six campuses to make the two-grade leap from acceptable to exemplary. Cunningham, Palm, Blackshear, Davis, and St. Elmo elementary schools also leaped to the top tier after notching gains of 21, 17, 13, 13, and 12 points respectively. 

St. Elmo Principal Ben McCormack echoed the importance of connecting and the role that plays in being supportive in times of acute strain.

“I think our success began by leading with our hearts,” he said. “We spent the first month of school setting a solid foundation based on addressing the social and emotional needs of every kid. Then we kept the momentum going in our morning meetings, weekly Social-Emotional Learning [SEL] themes, and restorative circles.”

Also restorative, said Casey’s Villarreal, was a January 2022 return to campus that allowed for increased access to the learning spaces offered by its outdoor learning school that including a story grove, an amphitheater and a garden.

“Part of the reason that we went from a C to an A was that students showed a lot of growth during the last year,” she said, crediting the on-campus presence of students as a factor in helping them learn. 

Meanwhile, over at central east Austin’s Blackshear Elementary, that school’s top official credited student and effort and the staff’s use of Professional Learning Community or PLC time to analyze data and share intervention strategies as key to the school’s journey from a 77 to achieving an exemplary rating with an overall score of 90.

“Our students worked diligently on tracking their data and setting academic goals,” Blackshear Elementary School Principal Tiona Bell said.

McCormack said part of St. Elmo’s two-grade leap could be attributed to the creation of flexible academic intervention groups that changed as students started to master certain skills or struggled with new state standards developed by the State Board of Education known as TEKS.

“Our teachers were dedicated and driven to help our kids improve and this improvement and growth was acknowledged, celebrated, and catalyzed into focused campus-wide motivation,” he said.

All six elementary campuses earned the Top 25% Academic Growth Distinction Designation from the TEA with 54 schools earning a total of 149 designations across the district, including 32 in the Academic Growth category. 

Growth from a B to an A grade took hold on 14 AISD campuses in 2022 after posting an average improvement of nearly 8 percentage points, with Ridgetop and Barton Hills posting the two highest increases of 15 and 10 points respectively. 

All told, 34.8 percent of AISD campuses now carry that state’s exemplary designation, significantly higher than the statewide figure showing 27.9% of all campuses earning an A-grade in 2022.

For every AISD campus graduating from a B to an A grade, the district replenished the ranks of its Recognized Performance campuses school-for-school, tallying 51 campuses with B grades for the second accountability report in a row.

AISD’s combined percentage of schools with grade A or B distinctions of 79.1%, outpacing the statewide figure showing 74% of all campuses earning either an exemplary or recognized performance grade.

Looking ahead, fifteen schools will have the opportunity to recreate the journey from C to A taken by Casey elementary and five other AISD schools. Key to making that trek, said Villarreal are patience, flexibility, and continued efforts at making the school a great place to work.

“This is my 8th year at Casey and while I have wanted to quit or retire, I know that school improvement takes time and teachers are the driving force of a school's success,” she said. “And for this reason, I've been focused on staff retention for the last few years, and this has made a huge difference on our campus.”