Denton ISD presents TAPR public hearing and midyear progress update; board presses on special‑education, dual‑language and scoring changes

Denton Independent School District staff presented the district’s Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) in a public hearing and followed with a separate midyear progress update at the Jan. 14 board meeting. The presentations summarized lagging accountability data as well as in‑year, instructional assessment results used by campuses to guide classroom planning.

Becky Lloyd, coordinator of assessment and accountability, presented the TAPR summary required by state law and told trustees that district year‑to‑date attendance is about 95 percent. She noted the report contains lagging data from 2022–23 and that some accountability measures—including college, career and military readiness (CCMR) and STAAR/STAR results—reflect changes at the state level that affected 2024 scores.

Lloyd said the district’s CCMR rate for the 2022–23 cohort was 76.1 percent and that staff are building lists of students still needing CCMR points; she reported that the end‑of‑first‑semester tally toward 2024 CCMR criteria was at about 46 percent for students identified so far this year. On state testing, presenters and trustees discussed two major contributors to lower STAR/STAAR percentages in 2024: stricter eligibility criteria for STAAR Alt 2 (which required some students previously assessed with Alt 2 to take the regular STAAR) and the state’s adoption of automated scoring for constructed‑response items in writing and other subjects.

“Attendance for the year to date is at 95 percent,” Becky Lloyd said during the presentation.

Board members asked questions about how policy changes affect students with significant cognitive disabilities and multilingual learners. Dr. Patricia Sosa Sanchez and others pressed staff for specifics on how the new Alt 2 criteria were implemented; staff responded that the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and state guidance prompted the changes and that the state determined which students must shift from Alt 2 to the regular STAAR when they no longer meet Alt 2 eligibility.

Trustees also questioned the district’s expectations for keyboarding and short constructed responses at early grades after staff confirmed that the 2024 STAR administration included short written responses across multiple subjects and required students to type those responses on computers in many assessments.

Following the TAPR hearing, Curriculum and Instruction staff presented a midyear progress update summarizing formative assessment snapshots used by teachers and campuses. District leaders said the aggregate midyear snapshot shows 46 percent of elementary students are at or above the end‑of‑year standard in reading at midyear and 33 percent in math; staff emphasized that these are interim instructional checks rather than final summative results and that teachers use the data to plan next steps for all students.

Presentation leaders said the middle‑of‑year reports are designed to be useful for campus teams and teachers; they explained reporting choices that trade granular campus‑level tables for simplified districtwide charts to make the data more digestible for trustees.

Board members encouraged district staff to provide more detailed guidance to families about what the midyear measures mean for individual students and to highlight supports for students who have changed assessment types or are still developing keyboarding skills.

Staff noted the Texas Education Agency’s proposed 2025 accountability manual is open for public comment through Feb. 10 and urged trustees and community members to review the proposed manual on TEA’s website.

The public hearing was opened and closed at the meeting without a formal board vote; trustees received the TAPR presentation as required by statute.