Texas School Ratings Released-Local Schools rated OK, except Crosby High

By LEWIS SPEARMAN
CROSBY – While both here and in Huffman the schools are overall rated Acceptable by the Texas Education Agency (T.E.A.) based on the T.A.K.S. testing for last year, two of 5 subgroups at Crosby High School were rated Academically Unacceptable. That brought the Crosby High down to Academically Unacceptable rating according to reports released on July 29.
With scores of Exemplary in overall Reading and Social Studies it is a safe bet that Crosby ISD will be appealing the rating. They also scored a Recognized overall in the Science and an Academically Acceptable in overall Mathematics.
Counting up the scores for Crosby High, seven scores were Exemplary, four were Recognized and six were Acceptable with two Unacceptable.
The scores are visible by going on-line to tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/
Viewing the detailed reports is available by campus name links to Accountability Data.
This reporter went to Dr. Kevin Moore, Superintendent of Crosby ISD, to find out why the high school got the Unacceptable rating.

“You are rated based on your worst score on your lowest performing subgroup. All of your categories could be Exemplary but if one were one point below Acceptable then your entire rating would be Unacceptable.”
What is the overall educational atmosphere in your opinion for Crosby ISD?
“From my year of being here when I look at it from a statistical standpoint, you look at the district you look at the population, you look at the demographics, you look at the socioeconomic status, you look at other factors, we have a district that can be successful. We have a community that is very proud of its educational system. We have a staff that is very professional, that takes their job seriously and wants to do a good job for their kids. I believe that we have parents that are primarily interested in their kids. When you have all of those systems in play then the overall outcome needs to be better. I as instructional leader of the district have to insure that have a system in place that maximizes all–the desire of the parents, the ability of the students, and the work ethic of our staff. I don’t believe that any of those things are why we have an academically unacceptable rating at the high school. We have to look internally to capitalize on the quality of community we have, and the quality of student body that we have. I’m taking it as a calling for me to evaluate the system as a whole and what kind of instructional program do we have to address the issues and how are we looking at our individual students and analyze our data to make sure they are successful. I think our staff is concerned about kids and work hard for our kids so the message is not going to be work harder but I as the Superintendent working with my staff and the campuses have to take the work ethic and say okay, we are not getting the results at the end that are equaling the amount of work we are putting in, so what is it about our system that is not showing those results. We are going to step back and look at our system from that level to analyze our system while we work with our kids on the short term to make them successful.”
What are examples of what you are talking about?
“We have to tutor more kids in Math, for instance, in the short term. We have to measure how students are reacting to our instructional system before we get to the accountability tests in the long-term to use that data to aid instruction.”
“We are going to work ourselves to the bone to make ourselves at least academically acceptable.”
“There are many strong indicators on these tests, the completion rate for the district overall is 96.3%, above the Exemplary completion rate and we always try for 100% of our students to graduate. We also participate in the PreA P.A. Dual credit Program. Our stronger students made higher Advanced Placement scores than they have had in a long time. You will find more 5s, the highest scores you can make. It has been a very successful year for our high school and our A.P. Tests.”
The districts evaluation of the TEA tests indicates that they come out Academically Acceptable but we given Academically Unacceptable Rating.
Dr. Moore says that only changes a word on a piece of paper and that they need to make changes for better outcomes.
So what are the administrators going to do about it?
“The Mathematics issue is not isolated to Crosby – it is a difficult test and a difficult subject for a lot of kids and it seems as they go through the system the higher they go the more difficult it becomes for them to be successful of this test. Our number one priority is those kids that are taking tests to graduate. We put things in place to be successful on the secondary level on a short-term basis. We work with them to do small group instruction, we develop plans for tutoring for interventions with kids and we look at our teaching strategies on a very immediate basis to try to help be more successful. I do believe though that the ultimate goal is to develop a curriculum instruction system across the district that develops long-term overall fundamental improvement. There are two sides to that coin, short term and long term. Long term is the more important side but you cannot let your students in tenth and eleventh grade wait for the long-term effects.”