Dear Chief Academic Officer
Happy New Year. Welcome to this month’s update curated for district Chief Academic Officers. As always, please feel free to reach out with ideas and questions, either to me or to the points of contact in the content below. I look forward to connecting with you.
 Penny Schwinn
Chief Deputy Commissioner, Office of Academics
Revised Testing Calendars
In response to feedback TEA received from districts and the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) Superintendent Cabinet, as well as in consultation with TASA’s executive leadership, TEA has revised the testing calendars for the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 school years.
Revised English and Spanish Language Arts and Reading standards were adopted in 2017 and will be implemented for kindergarten through grade 8 beginning in the 2019–2020 school year. Students will only be assessed on standards that appear in both the current and the revised TEKS in spring 2020 and will be assessed on all revised TEKS beginning in spring 2021. To facilitate mastery of the revised standards, TEA will provide access to professional development materials for ESCs, districts, and schools to use in training sessions for staff. TEA is also redesigning the Reading Academies through the Reading Excellence and Academies Development grant opportunity. Academies will be structured with an engaging, blended learning model that includes digital and in-person content delivery over a period of 15 months beginning with 5-days of professional development in the summer. Participants will also receive one-on-one instructional coaching. Competitive Letter of Interest applications are due on March 1, 2019.
This is the last call for district applications to participate in the Instructional Materials Quality Evaluation pilot. As a part of this pilot, districts will have exclusive access to free, transparent, and user-friendly information about the quality of materials submitted by publishers for grades 3–8 English language arts and reading (ELAR). Districts can use these reviews—similar to a Consumer Reports for instructional materials—as a tool to evaluate and select high-quality instructional materials. Please complete the brief (11-question) application and the assurances by Friday, January 11, 2019.
TEA requests preliminary public comment on a draft list of industry-based certifications to be used for public school accountability. The new list of industry-based certifications is scheduled to go into effect for the 2019–2020 school-year and will apply to school accountability ratings in August 2021. The public comment period is now open and will close on February 4, 2019.
New Texas Academic Performance Report
The 2017–2018 Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) was released with an expanded scope and function. It now takes two forms: an online data system, more comprehensive and dynamic than in previous years, and a PDF version.
Read past bulletins at our Chief Academic Officer Bulletin Archive.
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