By Wendy Gragg

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Last year, Brook Avenue Elementary School forged a close relationship with parents, provided training and new strategies for teachers and adopted some of the most cutting-edge technology in the Waco Independent School District.

Yet the North Waco campus was slapped with the label “academically unacceptable” when state accountability ratings were released this week.

“The progress these kids have made is tremendous, and (the rating) doesn’t show the hard work these teachers have put in,” Brook Avenue principal Jessica Hicks said.

Officials say the current state rating system, saddling schools with monikers ranging from “exemplary” to “unacceptable,” doesn’t tell the whole story of a campus. Sometimes, they say, the rating can simply be unfair.

State Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, says a new form of rating schools may well be on the horizon.

“I think we are likely to see some changes to the rating system next (legislative) session,” he told the Tribune-Herald. “For example, we are discussing measurements that more accurately reflect teachers’ successes instead of forcing them to teach strictly to the TAKS test.”

Lawmakers also are working to “identify opportunities to streamline the (rating) process so that it’s easier to understand, allowing schools, teachers and families greater opportunity to be involved,” Averitt said.

Even so, the state’s school ratings overshadow much else in districts across Texas. For instance, chronically low-performing G.L. Wiley Middle School in East Waco faces the possibility of closure, something that will be discussed during a special school board meeting Thursday.

School ratings are based largely on the percentage of students at a school passing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. These TAKS score results are broken down into sections, including grade level, subject area and student subgroups, such as Hispanic and economically disadvantaged.

Each subgroup must meet the standard percentage of students passing.

DeEtta Culbertson, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, says the purpose of the system was to make schools accountable for every child at every school. But somehow the ratings became synonymous with the idea of “good” and “bad” schools.

Culbertson’s Austin office gets calls every day from people trying to find “good” schools in Texas and asking how to use the rating system to do just that.

“We urge them to look beyond the ratings,” she said.

“That one-word rating will never tell the full story,” Waco ISD school board member Pat Atkins said. “It can’t.”

A perfect example of what gets left out of the rating system, Atkins says, is the Waco school district’s partnership with the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce in the area of workforce development. It has led to an aviation program at Waco High School and a health careers program at University High School.

“That sort of responsiveness to community expectations is not measured under the current accountability system,” he said.

Also not taken into account under the current rating system: gradual improvement.

“It might be fairer to have some kind of growth model in there as well,” said Marsha Ridlehuber, Waco ISD assistant superintendent for accountability and instruction.

The rating system, she says, is restrictive: A child can go from a score of 1,750 to 2,090, but because that child didn’t reach 2,100, the score didn’t count.

“We have to remind ourselves, those kids count, too,” she said.

It’s not just educators at lower-performing schools and districts who see holes in the state’s rating system.

The Bosqueville Independent School District, which drew sought-after “recognized” ratings for both its elementary and secondary schools this year, proudly advertises itself and its students’ accomplishments.

But while Bosqueville ISD Superintendent James Hopper says Texas probably has as good a rating system as any state, the task of rating schools in some ways seems futile, if only because it’s so indefinite.

“The problem is, they’re trying to do something you really can’t do — you can’t quantify an education,” he said.

In Bosqueville’s case, the word “recognized” may tell people the small district has a serious focus on academics, but that’s all it really reflects.

“Even if that word is ‘exemplary,’ it’s still not going to show the whole picture,” Hopper said. “We try to do well in those ratings, but that’s not the end-all. It’s just a part of the picture.”

Hopper says there are things going on in the district — doing more leadership development with the students, for example — that simply aren’t going to show up in TAKS or a rating.

Once campuses are wearing the armband of one rating or another, they’re sometimes compared to other schools, even though officials say such comparisons aren’t always valid.

“The rating system in and of itself is not fair because it’s not comparing apples to apples,” Atkins said.

Atkins says one can’t fairly compare the rating of a diverse school district, which is judged on the scores of several different student subpopulations, and the rating of a district with a fairly homogenous make-up. The latter simply has fewer subgroups to figure into the equation.

At schools like Brook Avenue — with a small student enrollment of just over 300, almost evenly divided between blacks and Hispanics — each student’s score is weighted more heavily. Hicks says that this year, the passing scores of two students were left out of the ratings calculation, pulling the school’s rating into the “unacceptable zone.”

WISD is appealing the rating.

There are more factors impacting campus ratings, such as poverty and lack of parental involvement, which not all schools may face.

“We are kind of a label society, but when you put a label on something, it’s black and white and something you need to look at are the grays,” WISD’s Ridlehuber said.

Hicks knows those societal challenges well but doesn’t drag them out easily as an excuse for her students or Brook Avenue’s rating. She says additional external challenges just mean she and her staff must work that much harder to make up for them.

To the detractors — those who look at Brook Avenue Elementary’s “unacceptable” rating and file it away as a bad school — Hicks says: “Come visit us and see how you feel when you walk in this building.”

Local education officials may find Texas’ school rating system unfair, but they don’t seem to waste time worrying about it.

“I’m not going to sit here and whine,” WISD board member Atkins said. “That’s the game, so let’s play the game. We’ve got to get to that level if we expect parents to take a look at other things we have to offer. As arbitrary as those labels are, you need to raise the bar to where the district is ‘recognized’ or ‘exemplary.’ ”

Although Hicks says she’s confident Brook Avenue Elementary School will win its appeal concerning its 2008 “unacceptable” rating, she dreads breaking the news to her teachers. But it’s just a word, and it doesn’t change the mission at her school, she says.

“If it gets overturned and we are ‘academically acceptable,’ are we going to do anything different? No. We’re going to do everything we can to make these kids successful,” Hicks said. “(A better rating) — that’s nice, it’s great, I want to have that also, but it’s not the bottom line. The bottom line is I want these kids to be successful in society.”

wgragg@wacotrib.com

757-6901