The Great Texas School Ratings Swindle: How Abbott’s A–F Scam Hurts Our Schools

Rigging the Scores to Manufacture Failure

It’s official: Texas public schools just got slapped with a wave of “failing” grades – and it’s no accident. The Texas Education Agency (TEA), under Gov. Greg Abbott’s hand-picked commissioner Mike Morath, rigged the state’s A–F accountability system to manufacture a crisis. By retroactively raising the standards and changing scoring methods, TEA engineered a collapse in school ratings despite many schools improving in real performance​. Over 100 school districts sued, pointing out that Morath unlawfully lowered 2022–23 ratings by moving the goalposts – a blatant ploy that caused scores to drop even when student outcomes went up​. The result? A skyrocketing number of campuses now branded as failures. Nearly one in five Texas schools (22.4%) received a D or F for 2023​, a shocking spike of well over 200% in “failing” schools compared to the last pre-pandemic ratings. The share of schools earning an F alone jumped from 4.5% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2023​ – a jump achieved not by a sudden drop in teaching quality, but by manipulating the metrics to make success harder to attain.

Public school districts outperform charter schools statewide again in 2023.

Public school districts have a higher percentage of A & B-rated districts and campuses, and a lower percentage of D & F-rated districts and campuses.

For example:

Charter schools have more than 15 times the percentage of F-rated districts compared to public school districts.

Charter schools have almost double the percentage of F-rated campuses. With over 94,000 charter students at D or F-rated charter schools, the state paid almost $1 billion of taxpayer dollars to provide failing choice options in School Year 2022-23 – about a quarter of all expenditures that were paid to charter schools statewide.

Thanks to Alejandro Pena and Patti Everitt for data analysis of 2023 accountability ratings.

Data Source for TEA Ratings: TEA 2023 State Accountability Rating System
https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/accountability/academic-accountability/performance-reporting/2023-accountability-rating-system-0

DISTRICT LEVEL DATA*

A and B-rated districts
Public school Districts: 52%
Charter schools: 40%

D and F-rated districts
Public school Districts: 15%
Charter schools: 36%

CAMPUS LEVEL DATA*

A and B-rated campuses:

Public school Districts: 52%
Charter schools: 51%

D and F rated-campuses
Public school Districts: 22%
Charter schools: 29%

* Data does not include Alternative Education Accountability (AES) districts or campuses because they use a different accountability standard.

TEA’s sleight of hand was so egregious that a state court initially blocked the release of these rigged ratings. For 19 months, parents and educators were kept in limbo, awaiting grades that officials knew would paint a misleading picture of widespread failure​. But Abbott had a backup plan. This spring, a newly formed appellate court – loaded with Abbott-appointed judges – sided with TEA and lifted the injunction​. In April 2025, the 15th Court of Appeals (a creation of the governor’s allies) cleared the way for Morath to publish the depressed grades​. Overnight, the narrative out of Austin became “240% more failing schools” – a convenient crisis manufactured by design. Now state leaders point to their own contrived failure ratings as proof that “something must be done” about public schools. It’s a cynical strategy: break the system, then claim only radical change (the kind they want) can fix it.

A Bipartisan Agenda to Undermine Public Schools

As outrageous as Texas’s ratings scam is, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader, decades-long agenda – one pushed by powerful interests across party lines – to replace locally controlled public schools with charter schools and private alternatives. Jeb Bush’s national education organization, ExcelinEd, has spent years promoting A–F school grading as a tool to justify “reforms” like charter takeovers. In fact, ExcelinEd brags that its “signature” A–F grading model has been adopted by 17 states as a way to spur “accountability”​excelined.org. Texas’s A–F system is a page straight out of the Bush playbook, designed not just to inform parents but to label and punish schools, softening the ground for charter expansion.

And this isn’t only a Republican project. Democrats at the national level have also championed policies that undermine traditional public schools. The Obama administration made charter school growth a key priority of its education agenda. Promising to expand charters was literally a criterion for states to win federal Race to the Top grants during Obama’s tenure . The result was an explosion of charter schools nationwide – and in Texas – under the banner of “innovation.” From Jeb Bush’s A–F report cards to Barack Obama’s charter grant bonanza, a bipartisan elite consensus has pushed the notion that public schools are broken and that private or charter alternatives are the solution. What they rarely admit is the endgame: a system where public education funds are funneled to privately run institutions, with local communities stripped of control.

Look closely and you’ll see the pattern in Texas. The sudden crush of “F” grades serves Abbott’s political narrative perfectly. It gives cover for his allies to claim public school districts are irredeemable and to demand “school choice” as the rescue. But the goal was never just better outcomes for kids – if it were, we wouldn’t be moving the targets and mass-labeling successful schools as failures. The real goal is to erode trust in public schools enough that parents will be persuaded to pull support and clear the path for a new paradigm.

HB 2: Morath's Charter School Power Grab

Adding fuel to the fire, House Bill 2 (HB 2), deceptively labeled as an "education finance reform," has granted Mike Morath even more authority, resources, and decision-making power—particularly over charter schools. Morath, despite his track record of failure and manipulation, now has expanded capabilities to pour taxpayer dollars into charter schools, regardless of their performance. Under HB 2, charter schools receive substantial new financing, further entrenching the privatization agenda.

“School Choice” Rhetoric Hides a Power Grab

Abbott and crew are now blanketing Texas with rosy talk of “school choice,” pushing vouchers and Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) as the panacea. Don’t buy it. The shiny rhetoric of “choice” hides an agenda of privatization and control that will hurt families and taxpayers. Under the plans being touted in Austin, parents might get a voucher or ESA check in exchange for leaving the public system – but they’ll be trading away rights and protections. Private and charter schools that take public funds will still have to meet state mandates, administer state tests and collect extensive data for accountability. In other words, the government will reach its tentacles into those schools too, dictating curriculum standards and testing regimen. Parents might “choose” a different school, but they won’t choose to escape state oversight – the schooling will still be under the government’s thumb, just with less transparency and no elected local board to hear parent concerns.

Worse, an avalanche of new charters or private vendors would create a Wild West of massive student data harvesting. Many charter and voucher-funded programs rely on EdTech software, online learning platforms, and third-party vendors that vacuum up student information. Without robust public oversight, children’s personal data – from test scores to learning disabilities – can be monetized by private companies in public-private partnerships. We’ve already seen troubling examples of data breaches and surveillance in some charter networks. The grand “choice” vision hands more of our kids’ data to private entities while cutting parents out of the governance loop. How is that empowering families?

Make no mistake: the “school choice” scheme is a plan to funnel public dollars to privately managed schools (and even homeschools), in exchange for those schools agreeing to play by the state’s rules. It’s a giant public-private partnership (PPP) boondoggle. Private operators get guaranteed taxpayer funding and in return must implement the state’s standardized tests and curriculum mandates. That’s not freedom – that’s a swap of one bureaucracy for another, with parents and local voters left on the sidelines. The only real “choice” being offered is to opt out of your neighborhood school and into a state-managed network of charter franchises or voucher-accepting private schools that live or die by government rules. It’s a Trojan horse: marketed as liberty for parents, but delivering more centralized control and less local accountability.

Public Schools Outperform Charter Experiments – The Data Proves It

Perhaps the greatest irony in this saga is that Texas’s public school districts are actually doing a better job, on the whole, than the charter schools being promoted to replace them. Abbott and his allies hold up charters as superior “innovators,” but TEA’s own 2023 ratings expose a very different story. According to the newly released data, only 17.4% of charter school networks earned an A grade for 2022–23​. For traditional independent school districts, the share of A’s was about 10%​– lower, but keep in mind charters are often smaller and self-selecting. The real eye-opener is at the other end of the scale: a staggering 16.3% of charter districts flunked with an F grade​, compared to just roughly 1% of traditional districts. In fact, of all 41 school systems statewide that earned an F rating, 29 were charter operators​ that’s 70% of all failing districts, even though charters make up only about 15% of Texas districts.

Looking at all low-performing grades (D or F) versus high-performing (A or B) makes the picture crystal clear. Nearly one-third of charter school districts (32%) fell into the D or F range, a rate over double that of traditional public districts​. Meanwhile, about 52% of traditional ISDs earned an A or B (roughly half), outperforming charter networks, only 43.8% of which managed to score an A or B​. The pattern holds at the campus level too: roughly 25.5% of charter school campuses were rated D or F, versus about 22% of campuses statewide (most of which are traditional schools)​. So much for the charter miracle – the data shows public school districts outclass charters by a wide margin when it comes to avoiding failure ratings and achieving top marks.

And let’s talk about waste. These low-performing charter schools aren’t just failing in the accountability system; they are siphoning off billions of our tax dollars in the process. Texas has roughly 350,000 students enrolled in charter schools. The state pours money into these schools to the tune of an estimated $3+ billion a year (since charters are funded by the state in lieu of local property taxes). What are we getting for that investment? Too often, empty promises and underperformance. We’re literally paying for failure – funding duplicate school systems that deliver lower academic results on average than our neighborhood ISDs. Every dollar diverted to a charter chain that then bombs on its report card is a dollar taken away from a public school that could have used it to reduce class sizes, pay experienced teachers, or expand tutoring programs.

The state’s own rating scheme has unmasked charter schools as, in many cases, riskier and less effective than traditional public schools. Yet instead of reevaluating the blind rush to charters, Abbott and company want to double down – even proposing to shovel public funds to private schools via ESA vouchers. We should be asking: Why throw more money at new “choice” experiments when the existing alternatives are largely failing? If charters were the magic solution, their report cards would reflect it. They don’t. The A–F grades prove that the vast majority of Texas’s A-rated districts are traditional public school districts​, and the vast majority of F-rated districts are charters. Any lawmaker truly interested in educational excellence would see this and hit the brakes on expanding charters and private subsidies. Instead, Abbott and his allies are hitting the gas – facts be damned.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Propaganda from the Pink Dome

Texans need to wake up and recognize that our public schools are under coordinated attack from those who stand to profit – politically or financially – by privatizing education. Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Sen. Brandon Creighton, and Rep. Brad Buckley are at the forefront of this offensive, aggressively hawking the largest government-controlled “school choice” scam in Texas history. They’re using the pink dome in Austin (our state Capitol) as a propaganda machine, blasting out misleading statistics and alarmist rhetoric to sell their ESA voucher scheme. They want to dangle a few thousand dollars in front of parents – taxpayer dollars that come with strings attached – and hope we don’t look too closely at the fine print. They don’t mention that accepting those funds could mean surrendering certain rights or subjecting your child’s private school to state testing mandates. They gloss over the fact that diverting funds to vouchers will drain rural and suburban public schools, which most Texas families still rely on. And they certainly won’t tell you that this is the same playbook used in other states to justify closing public schools and handing them over to charter operators.

National Security at Stake

Beyond the obvious corruption, HB 2 and the broader charter and school choice agenda pose serious national security risks. Charter schools and voucher programs entail extensive student data collection—academic, behavioral, psychological—managed by third-party vendors with questionable oversight. This creates vulnerabilities that hostile entities can exploit, potentially compromising highly sensitive student information and national security.

Soner Tarim - Harmony and Royal Charter School Advocate

We Texans pride ourselves on independence and straight talk. So let’s call this what it is: a Trojan horse for privatization and a power grab by Austin politicians and their cronies. The sudden increase in “failing” schools? Manufactured by those very politicians​ so they could incite a panic. The A–F grading system? Imported from a Jeb Bush blueprint​excelined.org designed to label schools as failures rather than help them improve. The “school choice” pitch? A marketing slogan to mask an effort to centralize control over education and funnel public money to private interests.

Texans, we must not fall for it. Our public schools belong to us, the people – not to bureaucrats in Austin, not to charter CEOs, and not to any governor. We elect local school boards to ensure our community’s values and needs are served. We have avenues to demand improvements when a school truly isn’t meeting standards. The system isn’t perfect, but it’s accountable to the public. The alternative being pushed by Abbott’s team would hand that accountability to unelected boards and out-of-state corporations, while muzzling our own voices. This is a fight for the very soul of public education in Texas.

The outrage is real, and it is urgent. If we allow this “A–F” con and false failing narrative to justify ripping apart our public school system, we may never get it back. Don’t let the slick ads and misleading talking points from under the Pink Dome fool you. Ask for the evidence. See through the hype. When you do, you’ll find that Texas’s public schools – your schools – are being set up to fail so others can profit. And you’ll find that the true path to educational excellence is to support and invest in our neighborhood public schools, not abandon them.

Now is the time to raise our voices. Call your legislators and tell them you see the A–F scam for what it is. Demand they publicly reject the voucher/ESA legislation Abbott/Patrick have forced into Texas that drains our schools. Show up at school board meetings and make it clear you value your children’s teachers and your local community schools and won’t let them be scapegoated. The future of Texas – our sense of community – depends on strong public schools with locally elected school boards.

This is a battle we can’t afford to lose. Abbott, Patrick, Creighton, Buckley and the rest are betting on Texans to be passive while they dismantle an institution that has served generations. Prove them wrong. Texans have never been ones to surrender our rights or be pawns in someone else’s game. Our public schools are our schools. Let’s defend them with everything we’ve got. The next time a politician tries to tell you our schools are “failing,” remember who set them up to fail – and remember that our kids, teachers, and communities are counting on us to defend their future. Don’t mess with Texas children.

Stand up, speak out, and stop the privatization scam before it’s too late. The only thing “failing” here would be for Texans to fall for this con job. Let’s ensure that doesn’t happen.​