School districts on the South Side of San Antonio are celebrating continued academic growth, separating them from other districts in the state and challenging stereotypes of poor academic achievement.
Southside Independent School District Superintendent Rolando Ramirez said this is a moment of celebration and added that he is excited to meet the challenge of the work yet to come.
“If we go back 10 years on the science scores, the district at that time was lagging 30 points or more compared to the region and the state,” he said. “For us to be able to match that component score with the region and be short one point from the state is something that we’re very proud of.”
In a letter sent Monday, Ramirez thanked parents for their support and said, “together, we will persist in our effort to improve each school year to make sure our students shine.”
The celebration comes as statewide numbers show troubling declines in math and science, something state leaders say is due to the pandemic disrupting education.
Despite the gains in Southside ISD, many students are still struggling to meet grade-level expectations in math and science, although the number approaching grade level has increased. Approaching grade level is enough to pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR).
Sylvia Rincon, a spokeswoman for Southside ISD, pointed to other schools on the South Side of San Antonio that were also doing well, rewriting a narrative that has long held precedent in the region.
“That stigma of ‘you go South and your grades drop,’ that’s not true anymore,” she said. “This is a competitive environment, and we’re glad to be a part of it.”
Ramirez drew comparisons to the scores in Northside ISD, the largest in the region, which is nearly 17 times the size in enrollment with 102,000 students vs. Southside’s 6,100.
“From all our math scores, we did better than they did,” Ramirez said. “And that is something that is a huge thing for us.”
In sixth-grade math, for example, 14% of Southside students mastered the math test, compared to 9% in Northside ISD and 13% statewide.
Northside ISD officials didn’t immediately respond to the comparison Tuesday but said in a statement earlier that district staff is still going through all the scores.
“There seems to be a drop in STAAR 3-8 scores compared to last year in the state,” district spokesperson Barry Perez said. “The most significant drop in performance was seen in 7th grade mathematics for NISD and the state.”
Seventh-grade students who take above-level mathematics take the 8th-grade STAAR, he added, meaning that on-level math students are the only ones represented in the 7th-grade STAAR data.
State accountability scores, which come in the form of letter grades given to campuses and districts each year, are largely based on how students perform on the STAAR test. One portion measures either growth from the previous year or student achievement, whichever is higher.
“Two years ago, the improvement on the [letter] ratings was a reflection on the improvement and not actual scores,” Ramirez said. “This year, we’re comparing the actual scores and how our kids did in comparison to the other school districts, including, let’s say, Northside [ISD], and we’re outperforming them.”
The Texas Education Agency did not release accountability scores last year, and the grades are still up in the air this year after some districts sued the state over what they say were unfair changes to the scoring system.
Southside ISD shared an analysis of scores compared to 9 neighboring districts, showing that they performed near the top of the list in many subjects, leading the pack in fifth-grade math and placing second in third and fourth-grade math.
Above them in several categories was Somerset ISD, another small school on the South Side with around 4,260 students.
Somerset ISD deputy superintendent Sheila Collazo said they were also celebrating the state numbers while digging in to see what the data can teach them for next year.
“As soon as the data came out, they were already disaggregating, … all the way down to the student and the student expectation level,” she said. “On day one of instruction, we’re ready to go. We already have created our intervention groups, our student groups, everything is already in place.”
The district has used several approaches over the last decade to achieve results they are now celebrating, including in-house assessments that help them prepare for the state assessment.
“We can predict within one to two points how we’re going to perform every single year on STAAR,” she said.
Collazo pointed to seventh-grade math, a subject where performance dipped in schools across the state.
Seventeen percent of students mastered the test, compared to 1% in Northside and 2% in North East ISD.
When asked about the fairness of comparing to districts of such varying sizes, Collazo said the core concepts are the same.
“When you have systems and processes in place, the work is scalable,” she said. “Whether you have one high school feeder pattern, or you have 10 high school feeder patterns, you replicate that work, so that it becomes systemic across the district, and it shouldn’t matter the size of the district, because you have relatively the same number of people supporting students.”
However, zip codes should not be the deciding factor in the education students get or their outcomes, she added.
“Every student can achieve at whatever level is expected of them,” she said. “And we need to create the culture and the conditions for that to happen. We’re responsible for that as leaders.”
