Waco ISD TAPR: special-education status flagged as "needs intervention," mixed academic trends reported

District staff presented the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) for 2023-24 and highlighted several mixed trends. The district has not received A–F accountability ratings pending litigation, and the TEA assigned a special-education determination of "needs intervention," citing academic performance, postsecondary readiness and disproportionality concerns for students with disabilities.

Miss Steele (speaker 6) reviewed STAAR results and said that where the state increased, the district generally saw proportional change; she pointed to small improvements at the masters level in some subjects and flagged changes to test item types introduced in 2023 and 2024 that complicate year-to-year comparisons. "For the 23-24, Waco ISD doesn't have any actual ratings pending litigation... '24 special education determination status, which is needs intervention, for our district," Steele said. Trustees questioned testing stability, teacher demographics and dyslexia identification; Steele and other staff described steps to address chronic absenteeism, special-education coding changes and CTE completion gains.

The presentation noted a roughly 10% decrease in chronic absenteeism between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years and highlighted graduation and CTE outcomes, including that 53% of the class of 2023 were CTE completers (above the state). Trustees asked staff to return with follow-up data on questions such as emergency or alternative teacher certification rates and selection criteria for early-childhood services.