AUSTIN, Texas — For the second year in a row, a judge blocked the Texas Education Agency from releasing school accountability ratings.

It came hours after a coalition of school districts filed a second lawsuit against the state over how standardized tests impact these ratings.

With COVID-19 delaying the complete release of school accountability ratings for three years before these lawsuits, we’re now going on five years without parents having a full picture of how schools are doing across the state. But opponents of these ratings say new rules for the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or STARR test are unfairly impacting these ratings and believe the standardized tests and these ratings may need to be scrapped altogether.

Clay Robinson with the Texas State Teachers Association says scores from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or STARR test have dropped across the board since going online last year.

“We have been trying to get the legislature to abolish the STAAR test for years. We feel it’s a waste of millions of dollars, millions of tax dollars every year,” Robinson said. “We know it’s not gotten any better, and we also have doubts about the accuracy of the computerized testing of these writing samples.”

His organization isn’t named in a lawsuit filed against the state calling for the tests to be re-standardized, but he says the T.S.T.A. does support the move.

In response to the lawsuit, a Travis County judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the Texas Education Agency from releasing this year’s school A-F accountability ratings, of which the STAAR tests heavily impact.

“It’s sort of a heartbreaking story because so many students took this, in our opinion, invalid and unstandardized test and performed so poorly on it,” Nick Maddoz, an attorney representing the school districts, said. “which not only impacted their own self-esteem and their own academic abilities but also impacted their community school district as well.”

Though initially five districts, the support is growing, and he expects to have 50 districts from across the state join the lawsuit by the end of the month.

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“We’re asking for school districts to not be graded on an A through F scale until the STAAR test has been accurized and reformed, and we have a valid basis of comparison,” Maddox said.

Texas State Representative Brian Harrison sits on the House Public Education Committee. He says after a similar injunction last year, this move only hurts parents and students across the state.

“They may have reasons to want to put them in one school or another, and depriving them of data deprives them of some of the most important information they have when making those considerations,” Harrison said.

He says the matter is worse when you consider COVID-19 blocked the complete release of accountability scores during the previous three years.

“I don’t think what makes sense right now is just to say that, okay, well, as a result of these potential concerns, let’s just withhold all of the data and at this point, for multiple years,” Harrison said.

He says if there’s an issue, the legislature should handle it.

“There’s nothing more important that we grapple with as a state and how we educate the next generation of Texans, and we have a system that, while it’s working well for a few, it is unfortunately failing far too many,” Harrison said. “Watering down accountability is the last thing we need to be doing.”

But Maddox claims they’re only suing because the T.E.A. isn’t following the law to begin with.

“Those laws are in place in the state of Texas, and it’s our opinion that the Texas Education Agency and Commissioner Morath are not following those laws,” Maddox said.

We reached out to the T.E.A. for comment, but have not heard back.

A hearing to make the injunction permanent is set for August 26th.

AUSTIN, Texas — All students at 77 schools in Austin ISD will receive free breakfast and lunch, due to the federally funded Community Eligibility Provision program.

The Community Eligibility Provision program enables schools in low-income areas to provide free meals to all students without any application or documentation.

The schools included in this program are:

• Uphaus ECC
• Allison Elementary
• Andrews Elementary
• Barrington Elementary
• Blackshear Elementary
• Blanton Elementary
• Blazier Elementary
• Boone Elementary
• Brown Elementary
• Campbell Elementary
• Casey Elementary
• Cook Elementary
• Cunningham Elementary
• Dawson Elementary
• Galindo Elementary
• Govalle Elementary
• Graham Elementary
• Guerrero-Thompson Elementary
• Harris Elementary
• Hart Elementary
• Houston Elementary
• Jordan Elementary
• Joslin Elementary
• Kocurek Elementary
• Langford Elementary
• Linder Elementary
• McBee Elementary
• Menchaca Elementary
• Norman-Sims Elementary
• Oak Hill Elementary
• Oak Springs Elementary
• Odom Elementary
• Ortega Elementary
• Overton Elementary
• Padron Elementary
• Palm Elementary
• Pecan Springs Elementary
• Perez Elementary
• Pickle Elementary
• Pillow Elementary
• Pleasant Hill Elementary
• Rodriguez Elementary
• Sanchez Elementary
• St. Elmo Elementary
• Travis Heights Elementary
• Walnut Creek Elementary
• Widen Elementary
• Williams Elementary
• Winn Elementary
• Wooldridge Elementary
• Wooten Elementary
• Zavala Elementary
• Bedichek Middle School
• Burnet Middle School
• Covington Middle School
• Dobie Middle School
• Garcia YMLA Middle School
• Lively Middle School
• Marshall Middle School
• Martin Middle School
• Mendez Middle School
• Paredes Middle School
• Sadler Means YWLA Middle School
• Webb Middle School
• Akins ECHS High School
• Crockett ECHS High School
• Eastside ECHS High School
• Garza Independence High School
• GPA at Navarro High School
• GPA at Travis High School
• International High School
• LBJ ECHS High School
• Navarro ECHS High School
• Northeast ECHS High School
• Travis ECHS High School
• Alternative Learning Center
• Rosedale School

Students from ineligible schools will use their meal status to eat at school.

Those schools will have these prices for students:

Breakfast:

• Full Price – Elementary Schools: $1.75
• Full Price – Middle & High Schools: $2.00
• Reduced-Price (All Levels): FREE
• Adult/Guest: $3.50

Lunch: 

• Full Price – Elementary Schools: $3.25
• Full Price – Middle & High Schools: $3.50
• Reduced-Price (All Levels): $0.40
• Adult/Guest: $5.00

In February, Texas chose not to be a part of USDA’s free summer school lunch program, the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer. The program would have allowed eligible families to receive $40 per month for each child.

AUSTIN, Texas — A video from Hood County Democratic Party Chair Adrienne Quinn Martin gained more than 41,000 views on TikTok in late July. The video highlights the lack of an online voter registration process in Texas. It shows the Texas Secretary of State’s online form where applicants can fill out their information and press submit. 

Martin says she made the video because she got several calls in 2020 from voters who thought they were registered, waited in line to vote, and were turned away.  

Online registration is only available if renewing a driver’s license, as Texas Republicans have shot down efforts to expand the online application to all prospective voters for nearly a decade. Texas is one of seven states that do not have online voter registration, so the website can be misleading. 

“I went on all seven websites and none of them had the kind of deceptive form like Texas. And Texas was absolutely the biggest one of them,” said Martin. 

Nearly one week after Martin’s video got popular, she posted a second video showing that the Secretary of State changed its form.

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office, Alicia Pierce, says they updated the button to “add clarity to the process,” adding that the “office helps facilitate voter registration multiple ways, including providing an online application form Texans can, print, sign and mail.” 

“Every eligible voter has the right to cast a ballot,” said Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson. 

But ultimately counties are responsible for their own voter registration administration. It’s why hundreds of election officials flocked to Austin Tuesday to prepare for November’s election. 

“Talk to other counties and how they do their stuff to give us good ideas in what we do,” said Sheila Houston with Jasper County. 

Part of the collaboration includes ways to store the paper registration information. Casey McClellan’s company, ECM Today, digitally stores data for 10 Texas counties. A juxtaposition to the voter registration process, but McClellan says it’s just as secure.

“There are many layers of security that have to be proven in order for a document to be stored,” said McClellan. 

Martin still believes online registration should be allowed in the state. 

“Texas is too big of a state to be this far behind in technology that we’re still having to have paper to register to vote,” she said. 

Voters can check their registration status or find an application to register on VoteTexas.gov. The last day to register to vote for the November election is Oct. 7.