High Poverty Levels Depresses Performance of All Students-cont.

This section contains 2024 STAAR test results for elementary and middle schools in the regular school districts in Texas. Only separate elementary or middle schools are included; schools which include both elementary and middle school students, or which also include high school students, were excluded. Data for charter schools were also excluded.

In some cases, data were not included in TEA’s data. For example, a school with zero percent economically disadvantaged students would have no MGL_ED score. In such cases, the MGL_ED score was set equal to that of the non-disadvantaged students in that school. Fourteen schools with mobility rates exceeding 50% were also excluded. If the MGL score for either ED or non-ED students exceeded 100%, that score was changed to 100%. Several other modifications were made, which might affect some individual school data, but are unlikely to affect the over-all performance or score patterns of an entire district. Data for individual schools are easily verified by going to the website of the Texas Education Agency, at this location.

Various versions of this software, packaged with different data sets, are available by clicking on the links to the left on the main page. Most of these also have links beneath the graphical display to download user instructions for this software. A particularly simple set of instructions are linked to beneath the graphs which show data for the 2023-2024 school year after the user clicks on Item 2: Display interactive graphs to the left of this page.

The features available when one of the data sets is displayed permits the user to compare the characteristics of schools in different districts, and to observe the patterns of academic achievement reflected in the test scores for a single district. In several cases, including this one that presents data for SY 2024, the results for each school are broken down between those students designated as economically disadvantaged and those not so designated. In practical terms, eligibility for the federal Free or Reduced-Price Lunch (FRPL) program defines the economically disadvantaged students. The individual academic performance measure for all students, for the FRPL students, and the non-FRPL students are included in the data table columns under the headings MGL_ALL, MGL_ED, and MGL_NED, respectively.

When the program is first initiated the graph on the left side of the screen displays MGL_ED on the vertical axis, and FRPL% on the horizontal axis. The graph on the right will display MGL_NED on the vertical axis, with FRPL% still on the horizontal axis. In addition to displaying the separate data for each school in the data table, when a school is identified, the data points for the school are highlighted with a blinking, colored circle in each graph. As described in the instructions, a rectangle can be drawn that encloses multiple points in one graph, and when that is done (with the [Mult] button set to “on” or color red), two things happen. First, the corresponding points are highlighted in the same color in both graphs. Second, averages for the values indicated in the data table column headings are displayed in the data window. The value of school enrollment, displayed in the ENR# column, of course, is the total of the enrollments for all schools whose points were enclosed in the rectangle.

A word about intent. This website and the various sub-sites available by choosing one of the links to the left of the main page, has a general purpose. That purpose is to make the point that as the percentages of FRPL students in schools increase, academic performance tends to decrease. Of course there are exceptions, but in many cases the exceptional performances, either positive or negative, can be accounted for. The majority of the variation (variance) in schools’ MGL_ALL scores is accounted for by five explanatory variables: (1) FRPL%; (2) percentage of mobile students; (3) percentage of African American students; (4) incidence of disciplinary actions; (5) percentage of students classified as Gifted or Talented. The adjusted R square for the 5,605 elementary and middle schools using the 5 listed explanatory variables, is 0.635. Even if all or most of the remaining variance could possibly be explained by district, school, or teacher characteristics, the variance due to these five explanatory variables would remain. Further, it is likely that the last four of those explanatory variables listed are at least in part influenced by the income and education characteristics of the parents or guardians of the affected students, captured substantially by the FRPL variable. Therefor, it is the conclusion of this observer that much more attention needs to be directed to the state and community characteristics and influences that result in 62 percent of the students in these 5,605 Texas schools residing in families whose incomes make them eligible for the federal FRPL program. It was determined in a previous exercise that 89 percent of FRPL students actually qualify for the Free Lunch Program. The ceiling for family income to qualify for the Free Lunch Program is just 30 percent above the federal poverty level. The percentage of FRPL students in Texas, now 62%, was 46% as recently as 1995. Poverty, or at least near-poverty, is having an immense influence on school performance in Texas’ schools.