An Audit Report on the Texas Education Agency's Public Education Accountability Information
August 2007
Report Number 07-045
Overall Conclusion
The Texas Education Agency's (Agency) processes and controls provide reasonable assurance that school accountability ratings are accurately calculated and reported. The Agency relies on the state's 1,227 districts to submit accurate student data. Also, a sample of accountability data for three campuses that were upgraded from academically unacceptable in 2005 to academically acceptable in 2006 was substantially accurate.
The Agency uses student demographic data submitted by school districts and testing results provided by its testing vendor to calculate accountability ratings for district and campus performance. The test results are reported for all students and ethnic and economic status groups. Incorrect classification of ethnicity and economic status by a district could affect the Agency's calculation of accountability ratings (see text box for additional information on accountability ratings).
While auditors identified a number of errors in demographic data at the 14 campuses visited, the errors did not affect the campuses' accountability ratings. Errors identified occurred because campuses did not have sufficient documentation to support how students were classified or because districts incorrectly coded student answer documents.
In fiscal year 2003, the Agency changed its monitoring program for accountability data. The Agency has not fully implemented these monitoring changes, such as following up with districts that have the least serious data quality issues. Once the planned changes are fully implemented, the Agency could further improve its monitoring process by performing additional data analysis to identify data irregularities and by conducting additional follow-up at districts that have less serious data quality issues to ensure errors are addressed at all districts.
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