Under Texas’ academic accountability system, all measures of high school graduates’ postsecondary readiness are counted equally. Districts and schools get the same amount of points toward their A-through-F grade for students who ace the SAT, earn an associate degree or nail down a manicurist certificate.
But in the coming years, state officials plan to change this framework, giving higher marks for metrics associated with college success, earning a degree and securing a higher-paying job. Ultimately, some benchmarks could be three times more valuable than others in calculating accountability ratings.
The expected shift would mark the latest update to the system, which largely relies on standardized test scores and college, career and military readiness — or CCMR — measures to assign letter grades.
The state’s accountability framework has a major impact on what classes, curriculum and programs are provided to Texas’ 5.5 million public school students. CCMR standards particularly guide many decisions related to high schools.
“In these accountability systems, they’re policy signals as to what you really care about and prioritize,” said Kerri Briggs, executive director of Educate Texas and a member of a state accountability advisory group. “So weighting indicators more heavily than others is a really strong signal about what we think matters for kids in terms of educational and workforce outcomes.”
Under state law, Texas must reevaluate its accountability system every five years, with the latest required update taking effect in 2028. Texas Education Agency officials, however, plan to wait until 2031 to start applying the new CCMR “differential weighting” proposal, though a final decision won’t be made until this spring or summer.
A Kinder Institute evaluation of past accountability system overhauls found state officials improved the framework in a few key ways, such as creating new pathways for measuring postsecondary readiness that better reflect Texas’ diversity and changing economy.
However, districts often struggled to swiftly adapt to frequent shifts in the accountability system, resulting in periodic declines in CCMR rates. Modifying classes and programs to better align with a fresh accountability framework can take multiple years.
The CCMR updates also did not close long-standing achievement gaps between students from different racial, ethnic and income backgrounds — an issue raised in the development of the proposed weighting framework.
“While equity-related discussions were present during the development of the accountability system in the past, they often focused more on system-level fairness than on addressing disparities for specific student groups,” said Mauricio Molina, a senior research analyst at the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Research Consortium. “This seems to be a continual difficulty in this go-around.”
Different measures, different results
Campus accountability ratings are a closely watched barometer of school quality, and repeated failing grades at a single school can trigger a state takeover of a district.
For high schools, the share of graduates deemed ready for college, career or the military can account for roughly one-third of an accountability grade. The impact on overall district grades is lower and more variable.
Texas deems students as ready for life after high school if they meet one of 10 benchmarks. They include scoring well on college entrance exams, earning dual credits from college courses, securing an industry-based certification and enlisting in the military. Students with disabilities can earn CCMR credit by completing individualized programs and plans that address workforce readiness.
But emerging data and research shows that Texas’ 10 benchmarks aren’t equally strong measures of whether students ultimately succeed after high school.
In a policy brief published last month, researchers at four Texas universities detailed stark disparities in postsecondary outcomes by CCMR benchmark for nearly 1 million recent graduates.
For example, students who completed college-level academic or vocational coursework had a notably higher likelihood of ultimately obtaining a degree or earning several thousands of dollars more in annual wages after graduation. By contrast, graduates who finished college preparatory or dual enrollment courses, the latter of which entail high school and college-level classwork in the same period, had worse outcomes.
“Indicators that consistently lead students into college but fail to support progress toward a degree should be flagged for redesign or reconsideration within the CCMR framework,” the researchers wrote.
The state’s proposal
Last year, state lawmakers ordered the TEA to study the connection between CCMR measures and postsecondary outcomes, then weight the amount of CCMR credit awarded to districts and schools based on the findings.
The result: TEA officials have proposed three CCMR tiers that respectively generate the equivalent of 1, 2 or 3 points.
The top tier features measures with the strongest ties to college success — including freshman year GPA, persistence into sophomore year and eventual graduation — or higher wages after high school. The lowest tier includes metrics least correlated with college and workforce success.
TEA leaders have wavered on when to enact the update, given that schools need time to adjust their operations in response to the shift.
After initially debating between 2028 and 2033, they have tentatively settled on 2031. Under that approach, next year’s incoming class of high school freshmen would be the first evaluated using the weighted CCMR framework.
The initial response
The TEA's nearly 40-member accountability advisory committee — composed of administrators, state government staffers and nonprofit leaders — has largely supported the proposal, but members have raised equity concerns and other issues.
During a May 2025 meeting, some committee members worried about equity issues, noting that “the system may overemphasize college readiness at the expense of career and military pathways,” according to the minutes. At a January meeting, one member noted that students with disabilities didn’t have a dedicated avenue to achieve the highest score.
Committee members were largely in agreement that the proposal needed more research and wasn’t ready for implementation in 2028, the minutes show.
Kate Greer, the founding partner of the education policy firm Magnolia Bay Group and an accountability advisory committee member, said she believes the 2031 implementation timeline strikes a balance between swiftly helping students and giving school administrators space to adapt to the changes.
“It’s entirely reasonable for school district leaders to have enough information and time to make program-level decisions to reach the bar that Texas is setting,” Greer said. “This is ultimately about using data in a way that tells districts what excellence is and here is how we signal that, and here’s the time you need.”
