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Burnet and Webb middle schools received a fifth consecutive failing accountability rating from the Texas Education Agency, the Austin school district announced Thursday, triggering a state law that directs Education Commissioner Mike Morath to either close the schools or appoint a board of managers to replace the elected school board.
Meanwhile, Dobie Middle School broke its streak of four consecutive failing ratings by earning a D, pausing the school’s accountability clock and avoiding the immediate threat of triggering the state intervention law for the campus.
Overall, the Austin school district received a B grade, an improvement from last year’s rating, district leaders announced Thursday. The ratings are preliminary until districts have a chance to appeal, the education agency reviews those appeals and finalizes campus grades in December.
Thursday’s announcement, which comes a day before TEA publicly releases accountability ratings statewide, moves Austin ISD one step closer to potential state intervention after months of district efforts to avoid it. The district has until Sept. 8 to appeal the data that led to the ratings.
District leaders will review data across schools to determine which ratings, if any, they would appeal, Superintendent Matias Segura said in an interview. Segura said he has not been in communication with TEA about whether the agency has plans to take over the district.
The A-F accountability system measures student achievement, academic growth and college and how well the school prepared students for life after high school. Under Texas law, five consecutive failing ratings mandates the education commissioner close the campus or take over the district by replacing the elected school board with a board of managers.
“I understand there is an anxiousness and concern in the community,” Segura said. “We are going to be here tomorrow, the teachers are going to show up, we are going to do the work to ensure their student gets what they need, regardless of what that looks like for that specific family, for that specific school. AISD will continue to be here; we have been here for 145 years.”
Two dozen Austin ISD schools, including Burnet, Dobie and Webb, were under state-mandated improvement plans last school year due to repeated failing ratings. But only those three middle schools were one failing rating away from triggering the state intervention law. District leaders closed another middle school, Paredes, in July after warning the school board the campus could receive a fourth consecutive failing rating for 2025-26 based on its testing performance last spring. That rating was confirmed Thursday.
Segura declined to speculate on the state education agency’s next steps for Austin ISD, but said the district is focused on doing the work the agency expects to improve student outcomes. Change takes time, he said.
Monthslong effort to avoid intervention falls short
At the end of the 2025-26 school year, Austin ISD closed 10 schools, seven of which were on state-mandated improvement plans. But the district could not close Dobie, Webb or Burnet during the school year to avoid state intervention. A TEA rule prohibits districts from closing a campus during a school year in which it could receive a fifth consecutive failing rating. To avoid another failing accountability rating, the district would have needed to close the schools before the 2025-26 school year began.
Austin ISD leaders spent months attempting to avoid state intervention after Segura told trustees in January that beginning- and middle-of-the-year testing data showed academic progress at Dobie, Webb and Burnet, but likely not enough improvement to avoid additional unacceptable ratings, potentially triggering a state takeover.
In the spring, board members voted to hand operational control of the three schools to Texas Council for International Studies, a nonprofit and the only organization that bid to manage the schools, hoping the partnership would qualify for a two-year pause on accountability ratings.
TEA later denied that request, saying the nonprofit did not meet the state’s requirements.
District leaders initially said they would submit additional evidence supporting the organization’s track record, but Austin ISD abandoned the partnership in July, just weeks after it formally began. As an explanation for the change, district leaders said the schools had shown enough academic progress for the district to resume operating the campuses itself.
Preliminary STAAR results released in June suggested the three schools were improving, but not enough to lift most students to grade-level performance. TEA considers students who approach, meet and exceed grade level expectations to be passing.
Burnet and Dobie posted notable gains in reading and math, helping improve their accountability scores. Webb also improved but continued to lag academically, with only about 15% of students meeting or exceeding grade-level expectations in reading and just under 10% doing so in math.
How Austin ISD schools performed
According to the state’s report, across Austin ISD:
- 61 schools open in 2025-26 received received an A or B rating
- 31 campuses open in 2025-26 got a D or F rating
- 8 schools broke their chain of consecutive unacceptable ratings
- 35 campuses increased a letter grade
Last year, a dozen Austin ISD schools faced three consecutive unacceptable ratings. Following a combination of academic improvement and school consolidations, only two of those schools – Linder and Pecan Springs elementaries – will receive a fourth unacceptable rating this year.
Segura said he brought campus leaders with a history of improving campuses to those schools and feels confident the schools will improve.
State law requires schools that receive one to two failing ratings to develop targeted improvement plans. After a third failing rating, schools must implement a state-approved turnaround plan, which can include replacing school leadership and operating with largely a new staff.
What happens next?
Austin ISD leaders have until Sept. 8 to appeal the ratings if they believe the agency made an error. Segura said district leaders would examine the preliminary data to determine what, if anything, would be appealed. The agency would then have 90 days to review the appeals and the campus grades would become final in early December.
“These are not negligible increases in As and Bs or even performance; these are significant,” Segura told the Current. “At the same time, the area that has been an immense focus for the district is middle schools, and certainly with Burnet, Webb and Dobie we took an aggressive intervention of restarting the campus. We made adjustments over the course of the year and we didn’t see the growth that we would have expected or hoped to have seen.”
With Burnet and Webb now receiving a preliminary fifth consecutive failing rating, Austin ISD will cross the legal threshold for state intervention if those ratings become final. The education commissioner would then determine whether to appoint a board of managers to govern the district or instead close the campuses while placing the district under state oversight with an appointed conservator.
Segura said he spent time at Burnet, Webb and Dobie this summer, and there will be two new campus leaders at the schools, adding the district was in a better position to support students based on what administrators saw last year.
TEA has taken different approaches in previous interventions.
In Houston ISD, state education leaders took over the school district, replacing the elected school board with a board of managers and superintendent. The district saw higher standardized test scores but also enrollment losses of more than 13,000 students.
Earlier this year, the agency intervened in Wichita Falls ISD by approving the transfer of students from a chronically-failing middle school to another campus, which was to be operated by Third Future Schools, appointing a conservator and closing the school that triggered the state intervention.The founder of Third Future Schools is the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD.
Segura said as the district progresses through the fall semester, he will work with the school board to determine what is best for the schools, including exploring a path similar to that taken by Wichita Falls. “Nothing is off the table, but, again, we are not there yet,” Segura said.
The agency is expected to notify Austin ISD later this year of its decision and timeline for any intervention, though it has not said when that announcement will come.
