After rescoring STAAR exams, 11 Texas districts seeing A-F grades improve - KSAT

The agency said the manual rescoring identified errors in how text responses were graded on the reading portion of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. Sixth through eighth graders were affected, along with students who took the English I end-of-course exam. The districts getting a ratings bump include Floydada Collegiate ISD, which sits about 45 miles north of Lubbock on the South Plains.

For families in those districts, the change is significant. A school's letter grade affects everything from state funding to property values to whether a campus faces state intervention. A district sitting on the edge of a lower grade could now avoid sanctions or qualify for different programs entirely. Parents who heard their child's school was underperforming may now get a different answer.

The other affected districts are Chester, Crandall, Daingerfield-Lone Star, Forney, Fredericksburg, Galveston, Jim Hogg County, Odem-Edroy, Southwest, and Walnut Bend ISDs. That a scoring error touched 27,200 students statewide before anyone caught it raises real questions about how the grading process works in the first place.