Austin ISD has a plan to improve failing schools. Here’s what it’s all about.

From KUT News:

The Austin ISD school board votes Thursday on a proposal to improve three middle schools that have received consecutive failing grades from the state. The district must submit turnaround plans for Burnet, Dobie and Webb middle schools to the Texas Education Agency by Monday.

The board’s decision is the culmination of a whirlwind few months that has left families, students and educators reeling as Austin ISD prepares to overhaul schools to avoid state sanctions.

The stakes for the entire district are high. If any campus gets failing grades five years in a row from the TEA, the Texas education commissioner can remove the elected school board and replace them with a board of managers. This type of takeover happened in Houston ISD in 2023, and earlier this month the TEA extended it through 2027.

Burnet, Dobie and Webb are nearing the threshold that would prompt state intervention. In April, all three schools officially received their second consecutive “F” rating when 2023 A-F accountability ratings, which were delayed by a lawsuit, were released. While the 2024 ratings are tied up in court by another lawsuit, Austin ISD officials have said those schools are set to receive a third failing grade. The district expects the campuses to get their fourth “F” when TEA releases 2025 accountability ratings in August.

The ratings are primarily based on how students perform on state standardized tests. The overwhelming majority of students at all three middle schools are considered economically disadvantaged. STAAR results released this month show Austin ISD is struggling to close the achievement gap between students from low-income and wealthier households.

Additionally a majority of students at Burnet, Dobie and Webb are considered emergent bilingual, meaning they are fluent in one language and learning English. Starting in sixth grade, STAAR tests are offered only in English.

To avoid a similar fate to Houston ISD, Austin had several options, which included closing the campuses or partnering with a charter school to run them.

In the face of public outcry to keep the schools open, administrators opted to pursue a district-managed restart, basically meaning they came up with a plan to overhaul the schools and invest additional resources in them. The TEA must approve the plan, and the district can still partner with a charter school if needed.

The restart plans are based on the Accelerating Campus Excellence, or ACE, model, which requires major changes to staffing, the school day and an infusion of resources that range from offering more mental health services to providing students three meals a day. According to a 2023 annual TEA report, more than 40 schools statewide were using this model.

Here’s a look at the model Austin ISD is following to try to improve schools.

The ACE model requires a lot of resources

The restart plan Austin ISD has proposed is going to cost an estimated $1.7 million per campus — all while the district is slashing spending elsewhere to dig its way out of a $93 million budget deficit. Andrew Hodge, the TEA’s associate commissioner of system innovation, said the ACE model is resource-intensive.

“It is sending what we know works in schools to those schools. And so that is the best teachers, that is more time, that is wraparound services for students and it’s really engaging with community [and] ensuring that the campus is delivering on what the community wants,” he said.

Chris DeWitt, director of the TEA’s division of system support, said while the model has proved to improve student outcomes, the resources it requires mean districts have to be strategic when implementing it.

“It’s not a play you can call at every campus in the district across the board,” he said. “It needs to be really targeted to your highest need campuses to rapidly improve those outcomes.”

The lion’s share of that $1.7 million will go toward staff compensation, including stipends to attract and retain teachers. The restart plans require teachers at Burnet, Dobie and Webb to meet certain criteria in order to work at the middle schools.

“What we know from research is that the number one most important in-school factor in kids’ learning is the quality of the teacher in the classroom,” Hodge said.

According to Austin ISD, 68% of teaching staff at Burnet were invited to return because they met the plan’s criteria. At Dobie, the figure was 32%; and for Webb, it was 57%. This turnover prompted students at all three middle schools to stage walkouts in support of their teachers.

Hodge said while the ACE model is based on tried and true practices for improving student outcomes — like hiring more experienced teachers — it’s crucial to engage the community in these changes.

“No school improvement effort, no school redesign effort, no school transformation effort will ever go, in our experience, incredibly successfully if you don’t start day one alongside with the community,” he said.

Has the ACE model improved student performance?

Courtney Isaak Pichon, the chief partnerships officer with Good Reason Houston, has seen firsthand how the implementation of the ACE model can bolster student performance. Her group works with school districts in the Houston area to improve student outcomes. She said the ACE model is the cornerstone of the strategy to do that.

“My headline for you is ACE works,” she said. “The data shows it, and we need to scale these best practices so that more schools and more students benefit across the state.”

Good Reason Houston has worked with Aldine ISD to implement the ACE model at two elementary schools. Isaak Pichon said when her group compared student performance at those two schools with 10 of the most similar campuses across Texas, students at the ACE campuses had higher student achievement and growth.

She added that Black students, emergent bilingual students and students receiving special education services at Aldine ACE campuses also had better academic outcomes than at other schools in the district.

“When you boil it all down, ACE is really just about having better talent and better instruction for students in underperforming schools,” she said. “Better talent means that districts’ strongest teachers and leaders are in front of students that need them the most.”

Austin ISD officials said Aldine ISD is one of the districts they looked at when working on turnaround plans based on the ACE model.

Will the better results last?

While research has shown student achievement can improve quickly at campuses that use this model, test scores often fall back when the investment of additional resources ends.

Hodge said a study of ACE within Dallas ISD found when the staff stipends were eliminated, it had an impact.

“A bunch of those highly effective teachers left and the test scores did fall,” he said.

Hodge said it’s important for districts to figure out how they can continue to provide resources to these campuses to sustain their success.

David DeMatthews, a professor in the UT Austin College of Education, said the ACE model is just a temporary fix if there aren’t broader investments to increase teacher quality.

“In some ways, you’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul. You’re pulling out effective teachers from other parts of the school district and you’re moving them into the school with the greatest need,” he said. “You’re not necessarily creating and retaining more effective teachers across the district.”

DeMatthews also said while the model may give an immediate bump to student test scores, that’s not the be-all and end-all.

“One thing that worries me with the model is that Austin ISD is in hot water, maybe because they haven’t been paying as close attention to some of these schools as they should,” he said. “And now we’re going to implement a model that heavily prioritizes student achievement on standardized tests to get out of hot water, but that’s not necessarily what students need most from their teachers or from their school.”

While Austin ISD officials have expressed confidence that this model will improve student performance at the middle schools, they do have a backup plan. If test scores aren’t where they need to be to avoid a fifth failing grade from the state, Austin ISD could decide in December to partner with charter schools to run the campuses.

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