Making sense of Del Valle’s report card

Every August, the state of Texas gives each school district a letter grade: A, B, C, all the way down to F, the same letters our kids bring home on their own report cards. This year, Del Valle got a D.

If you’re raising children here, that number probably landed somewhere in your chest. These are our kids’ schools we’re talking about. So before it turns into a talking point for anybody, myself included, I want to walk through what that grade is really measuring. I think it’s important to talk this through, because up until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t know what it meant myself. Once you can see how it’s built, you can decide for yourself what to make of it.

That single letter, a D, is really three different measures blended together:

• How our students did on the state’s tests this spring. It’s a snapshot of one stretch of one year, and there we scored a 66.
• How much they grew. This one asks whether a child who took the test last year moved forward this year, wherever they started, and there we scored a 69. Both of those are D’s. That growth measure matters more than people realize, because a student who arrives two grade levels behind and gains a year and a half has done something real that a raw score will never show you.
• How well the district serves the kids with the furthest to go. These are the ones still learning English, the ones with disabilities, the ones from families stretched thin. Here we scored a 59, which is an F. That’s the one I pay the most attention to, because serving every child, and not only the ones who arrive ready, is the whole promise a public school makes.

Now, two things are true at the same time, and you deserve to hear both.

The first is that several of our neighbors did better this year. Hutto earned a C. Georgetown, Pflugerville, Austin, and Round Rock earned B’s. A family that moves ten minutes down the road, or that chooses to send their child to another district, is choosing a higher-rated one, at least on paper. I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t matter, because for a lot of families deciding where to plant their lives, it does.

The second is that the ruler itself keeps changing. A few years ago the state raised the bar on these tests suddenly, and so many districts felt the change was unfair that they took the state to court, and a judge agreed with them. So the grade you’re looking at this year isn’t always measured the same way as the one you remember from a few years back. That context doesn’t erase the D. But it should make you wary of anyone who holds up a single letter as the entire truth about our kids’ schools.

Because it isn’t the entire truth. I’ve spent time in these buildings. I’ve watched teachers do remarkable work with far less than they should ever be handed, and I’ve sat with kids who are curious and sharp and every bit the equal of a child in any district with a prettier letter on its door. A grade can tell you a great deal. What it can’t tell you is the care and the warmth our kids are met with every day on our campuses here in Del Valle.

So what should you do with a grade like this? Start by being honest about it, the way I’ve tried to be here: this isn’t a bad year, it’s a pattern. Del Valle has been sitting at a D for a while now, and that’s not something any of us should explain away or get used to.

And still, if you’re reading this with a knot in your stomach, hold onto one distinction. A grade for a whole district is not a grade for your child. It doesn’t measure your kid’s mind, or their future, or the teacher who greets them by name every morning. The work here belongs to the district, and it is real. Your child is not the thing that failed.

Now, I’ll be straight with you about what this piece is not: it’s not where I hand you a tidy plan and ask for your vote. I do have ideas about how we turn these numbers around, and I’m going to lay them out in the weeks ahead: in full, and honest about what a school board can and can’t control.

And I’ll keep doing my part: breaking these scores down, one at a time, so that every time you walk into that room, you already know what the numbers mean and can ask the questions that matter most for your kid.

Pol. adv. paid for by Mike Randolph for Del Valle.