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Federal And State Accountability
The Federal and State Accountability Department supports the state’s goal to improve low-performing schools by reviewing, evaluating, monitoring, and intervening with campuses to ensure excellence in education for all students. The department is responsible for monitoring campuses and interventions for federal accountability, state accountability, and dropout prevention.
Our Mission
Empowering leaders to transform schools to foster student success.
Our Vision
The Federal and State Accountability Department is committed to transforming our schools that need improvement, empowering campus leaders, and supporting student achievement.
Our Objective
The primary objective of the Office of Federal and State Accountability Department is to guide the Comprehensive, Targeted, and Additional Targeted Support Schools. The department will monitor and assist the schools identified under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) with preparing and implementing Targeted Improvement Plans that include targeted instructional interventions designed to close achievement gaps, as ESSA prescribes.
Our Schools
The "Closing the Gaps" domain of the state accountability system uses disaggregated data to determine achievement gaps among racial/ethnic groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, and other factors. The indicators included in this domain, as well as the domain’s construction, align the state accountability system with the “Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).” ESSA requires states to identify schools that are struggling. There are three categories of struggling schools that states must try to improve: Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI), Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI), and Additional Targeted Support (ATS).
Comprehensive Support and Improvement Identification
Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI-Identified, CSI-Reidentified, or CSI-Progress), schools are identified by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). TEA annually ranks all Title I campuses based on Closing the Gaps scale scores. The first time a school meets the CSI-Low Performance criteria, they are identified CSI-Identified. Each following year a school is identified for CSI, they are CSIAccountability Rating System Manual 2025 Ratings Reidentified. CSI identification criteria are as follows: First, TEA determines the bottom five percent of Closing the Gaps outcomes by rank ordering the scaled scores of Title I campuses by school type— elementary, middle, high school/ K–12, and alternative education accountability. TEA then determines which campuses fell in the bottom five percent for each school type. Title I campuses that rank in their school type’s bottom five percent are identified for CSI. Additionally, if any Title I or non-Title I campus does not attain a 66.7 percent six-year federal graduation rate for all student groups, the campus is identified for CSI.
Targeted Support and Improvement Identification
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) uses Closing the Gaps domain data to identify campuses that have consistently under-performing student groups. A student group that misses the targets in at least the same three indicators, for three consecutive years, is considered “consistently underperforming.” Data from 2019, 2022, and 2023 are considered consecutive years for 2023 TSI identification. Data from 2022, 2023, and 2024 are considered for 2024 TSI identification, and so forth. The chart below shows additional years. A “no” is considered missing the target for 2019 and 2022. For 2023 and beyond, a student group that earns either a zero or one point for the indicator is considered as missing the target.
| Consecutive Years of Underperformance | School Year Implementation |
|---|---|
| 2019, 2022, 2023 | 2023-2024 |
| 2022, 2023, 2024 | 2024-2025 |
| 2023, 2024, 2025 | 2025-2026 |
| 2024, 2025, 2026 | 2026-2027 |
Any campus not identified for CSI that has at least one consistently underperforming student group is identified for TSI. TSI identifies both Title I and non-Title I campuses. Campuses are evaluated annually for TSI identification.
Students Evaluated In alignment with ESSA, TSI identifications are determined annually. For a campus to be prevented from being identified as TSI the following year, it must either meet interim targets or show expected growth in the indicators that were previously identified as consistently underperforming. The annual TSI identification uses the disaggregated performance of the following student groups:
- African American
- American Indian
- Asian
- Hispanic
- Pacific Islander
- White
- Two or more races
- Economically disadvantaged
- Current Special Education
- Emergent Bilingual (EB) students/English learners(EL)
- Continuously Enrolled (beginning with 2023)
- Former Special Education (beginning with 2023)
Additional Targeted Support Identification
Additional Targeted Support (ATS) identification is based on a subset of TSI-identified campuses. ATS identifies both Title I and non-Title I campuses. Any TSI-identified campus has its identification escalated to ATS if it meets both ATS identification criteria. First, the campus must meet the identification for TSI by having at least one consistently underperforming student group. Second, the Closing the Gaps score for at least one consistently underperforming student group must be lower than the score used to identify the lowest performing five percent of each school type (the same cut point used to identify CSI).
Office of Federal and State Accountability
9400 North Central Expressway, 11th Floor
Dallas, Texas 75231
Phone: (972) 925-3106