Every grade on this site comes from public data, applied the same way to every district. Here's exactly how we do it — nothing hidden, nothing proprietary.
Each school board receives a grade on three dimensions — Academics, Finances, and Community — combined into an overall letter grade. Weights reflect what matters most: academic outcomes are the core mission of a school board, so they carry the most weight.
Overall scores map to letter grades: 90–100 = A · 80–89 = B · 70–79 = C · 60–69 = D · below 60 = F
A board's primary job is student outcomes. The Academic grade measures whether students are performing relative to their peers — districts with similar size, demographics, and economic conditions — not against a statewide average that ignores context.
STAAR Math and Reading scores at the "Meets Grade Level" threshold — the standard that best predicts long-term academic success. Both subjects weighted equally.
Each district is compared against a custom peer group — districts of similar size, demographics, and economic disadvantage rate. A district is not penalized for serving a harder population.
Current performance accounts for 40% of the Academic score. The 5-year trend accounts for 60% — because a rising district shows the board's decisions are working.
The 2020–2021 school year is excluded from trend calculations due to extraordinary pandemic disruption. Trend is calculated across the remaining years in the window.
Performance Score = percentile rank among peers (0–100)
Trend Score = change in peer percentile rank over 5 years, scaled 0–100
Academic Score = (Performance × 0.40) + (Trend × 0.60)
School boards control budgets worth billions of dollars. The Finance grade examines whether a board is managing community resources responsibly — measured by how much debt they've taken on per student and how efficiently they're spending.
Total outstanding bond debt divided by enrollment. Compared against peers — a district at the 70th debt percentile scores around 30 on this component. Lower is better.
3-year average ratio of instructional spending to total operating expenditure, compared to peers. A district spending more of each dollar in the classroom scores higher.
Any district carrying more than $20,000 in bond debt per student is capped at a maximum Finance grade of D — regardless of peer rank. Extreme debt is disqualifying.
Excessive bond debt consumes future operating budgets through debt service payments, crowding out spending on teachers, classrooms, and programs for decades.
Who are board members actually accountable to — the community that elected them, or the large donors who funded their campaigns? The Independence Score answers this using publicly filed campaign finance reports, measuring what share of each trustee's funding came from small community donors vs. large institutional interests.
Score 1 — Highly Independent (Grade A) More than 50% of campaign dollars came from donors giving $100 or less. Electoral viability depended primarily on broad community support.
Score 2 — Mildly Independent (Grade C) More than 50% of campaign dollars came from donors giving $500 or less — not dominated by large institutional funding.
Score 3 — Not Independent (Grade F) More than 50% of campaign dollars came from donors giving $1,000 or more. The campaign was primarily funded by large donors — PACs, corporations, or wealthy individuals.
The board-level Community grade is the aggregate of individual trustee scores. Trustees who ran unopposed and raised no contributions are noted as N/A. The methodology does not assess the policy positions of any donor — only the financial dependence structure of the campaign.
STAAR results, PEIMS enrollment and demographic data, and accountability reports used for the Academic grade.
tea.texas.gov ↗Outstanding bond debt by district, used to calculate debt per student and the $20k absolute cap.
brb.texas.gov ↗Candidate and officeholder campaign finance reports (Form C/OH), used to calculate each trustee's Independence Score.
ethics.state.tx.us ↗