Methods & honesty
The rules this site follows so its numbers deserve your trust, including the ones that make our findings less dramatic.
Where the data comes from
Everything here is extracted from the Texas Education Agency's public Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR), the state's official per-campus accounting. They cover school years 2012-13 through 2024-25 for every Texas campus and 14 student groups. Extracted values were validated cell-for-cell against TEA's official PDF reports for reference campuses.
Years mean what students experienced
TEA publishes each year's report carrying the previous class's outcomes. Every year on this site is the data year, the school year the students were actually measured in, not the report year. "2022" on a graduation chart means the class of 2022.
Missing means hidden, not zero
When a group at a campus is small, TEA masks the number to protect student privacy. Those cells are shown as gaps, never as zeros. A school with no line for a group usually has too few students in it, not none.
Small groups are noisy, so read the bands
A school with 15 Black graduates moves 6-7 points when one student's outcome changes. Charts shade a 95% confidence band (Wilson intervals) and show n, the number of students behind each rate. County and state figures pool students across campuses (sum of numerators over sum of denominators), which is why they're steadier than any single school.
County rates pool regular high schools
County and statewide rates for high-school measures pool campuses TEA classifies as regular high schools, so one giant alternative-education campus can't skew a county. Grades 3-8 test rates pool every campus. Each school's own page always shows that school's own numbers.
"Enrolled in a Texas college" undercounts college
The college enrollment measure counts only enrollment in Texas institutions the fall after graduation. Graduates who go out of state, enlist, or enter trade programs don't appear. Levels are therefore understated for everyone; trends and group comparisons within Texas remain meaningful.
Broken series are marked, not smoothed
The SAT was rescaled in 2016, the college-ready benchmark was redefined between 2017 and 2018, and COVID cancelled testing in 2020. Charts mark these breaks with dashed lines and split the series rather than drawing through them. Comparing across a break is a mistake this site tries to make hard.
Association, not causation
Everything here is observational. When a school places Black students in advanced courses below what scores predict, that is a measured statistical shortfall. The data cannot see intent, counseling conversations, or family decisions. Findings are worded as what the data shows, and the stories carry their caveats inline.
Participation rates can top 100%
SAT/ACT participation divides test-takers by graduates; where many juniors test, the ratio can exceed 100%. It's a quirk of the state's published denominators, left as-is rather than hidden.
Every value is extracted from the state's published reports and checked against them. Source data: Texas Education Agency, TAPR. This site aggregates public statistics; it names no student and shows nothing TEA hasn't published.