CASE STUDY

One elementary school in Round Rock ISD went from an F to a B in one year.

It wasn’t alone.

Nine Round Rock ISD campuses, including every one rated D or F, spent 2025–26 with a coach alongside their leadership teams. Midway through the year, the work changed shape. By August, seven had improved, five had gained a letter grade, and the district had made the approach an expectation for every campus.

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An elementary school student smiling in a classroom
THE CONTEXT

Nine campuses. 5,670 students.

In 2024–25, Round Rock ISD had five campuses rated D or F. Those five—and four more—served a student population with substantially different economic demographics than the district overall.

5,670

students across the nine campuses

NINE PARTNER CAMPUSES
57%

eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

ROUND ROCK ISD OVERALL
27%

districtwide free or reduced-price lunch rate

WHAT HAPPENED

One year later, every D or F-rated campus had moved to C or better.

5 → 0

campuses rated
D or F

7 of 9

campuses improved
their overall rating

+10 pts

cohort average gain (vs. +2 districtwide)

+13.6 pts

average gain on Closing the Gaps

9 → 15

campuses in the partnership for 2026–27

HOW THE PARTNERSHIP WORKED

A practical, on-campus coaching model.

The 2025–26 engagement connected campus-level evidence with district priorities. Each cycle moved from understanding the campus context to observing instruction, identifying key gaps in student learning, preparing leaders for upcoming meetings, and monitoring progress together.

THE PARTNERSHIP

The work began with observation and feedback of teachers. What leaders learned on campuses would eventually point the partnership somewhere else.

01
LISTEN

Start with the campus.

Each campus began with an hour-long virtual conversation with the principal or another campus leader—building trust, establishing context, and preparing for the first site visit.

02
OBSERVE

See instruction firsthand.

On the initial site visit, coaching focused on Tier 1 math instruction across tested grades and planning a PLC. Campus leaders and the coach debriefed the evidence together, identified high leverage action steps and established short- and long-term goals.

03
PRACTICE

Prepare before the meeting.

Between visits, campus leaders prepared and practiced for upcoming planning or data meetings tied to their action steps. The coach provided continuous feedback through follow up visits and video review of PLC meetings.

04
MONITOR

Keep district and campus work connected.

District leaders stayed close to the work through frequent progress monitoring, including monthly meetings with the Executive Director of Teaching and Learning and Area Superintendents to review performance and shape subsequent site visits.

District strategy → Campus leadership → Educator practice → Student experience
THE TURN

The evidence pointed somewhere the plan hadn’t.

Observation and feedback was where the work began. But after the second round of campus visits, a different pattern emerged: the gap wasn’t simply in what leaders observed during teaching and learning. The root cause was how planning and data meetings were being prepared and run—the meetings where teachers decided what to teach next.

ILT meetings became the engine.

Instead of using ILT time for tactical updates or data sharing, principals began using it for focused preparation, practice, and feedback. PLC facilitators rehearsed upcoming meetings with the ILT and received feedback before leading them with teachers.

WHERE THE WORK BEGAN

Observation + feedback

Leader observes instruction
↓
Teacher receives feedback
THE EVIDENCE POINTED TO

ILT preparation

Facilitators rehearse planning and data meetings
↓
Teachers encounter a more focused meeting
↓
Instruction becomes more actionable
WHAT THAT LOOKED LIKE ON CAMPUS

The practice changed. So did the conversations.

JOE LEE JOHNSON ELEMENTARY

Data meetings became consistent.

ILT meetings helped facilitators prepare for stronger data meetings so teachers could see student progress through exit tickets, unit assessments, and curriculum-based assessments—and act on it.

50 → 80 OVERALL RATING · F → B
30 → 79 CLOSING THE GAPS · +49 POINTS
BLUEBONNET ELEMENTARY

Planning became more focused.

ILT meetings became preparation and practice for weekly planning meetings, helping facilitators narrow the instructional focus for teachers in math and reading.

64 → 88 OVERALL RATING · D → B
92 · A ACADEMIC GROWTH
THE RESULTS

Nine campuses. Measurable gains.

TEA overall accountability scale scores and letter ratings for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 school years, which TEA publishes as the 2025 and 2026 ratings.

Campus 2024–252025 rating 2025–262026 rating Change
Joe Lee Johnson ES 50 · F 80 · B +30
Bluebonnet ES 64 · D 88 · B +24
Anderson Mill ES 57 · F 76 · C +19
C.D. Fulkes MS 60 · D 71 · C +11
Neysa Callison ES 69 · D 75 · C +6
Deerpark MS 72 · C 78 · C +6
Hernandez MS 75 · C 79 · C +4
Double File Trail ES 75 · C 72 · C −3
Wells Branch ES 76 · C 69 · D −7
Cohort average +10.0
Round Rock ISD overall 87 · B 89 · B +2
CLOSING THE GAPS
+13.6 points

across the cohort.

The cohort’s largest average gain across the state accountability domains.

Campus 2024–25 2025–26 Change
Joe Lee Johnson ES 30 · F 79 · C +49
Anderson Mill ES 43 · F 77 · C +34
Bluebonnet ES 63 · D 80 · B +17
Deerpark MS 64 · D 78 · C +14
C.D. Fulkes MS 60 · D 73 · C +13
Neysa Callison ES 72 · C 73 · C +1
Hernandez MS 76 · C 77 · C +1
Double File Trail ES 74 · C 71 · C −3
Wells Branch ES 71 · C 67 · D −4
Round Rock ISD partnership
FROM ROUND ROCK ISD
“

That’s a lot of hard work to move a system this large. Our principals and our teachers have really poured their hearts and souls into making sure the kids get what they need.

Natalie Nichols
Senior Chief of Schools & Innovation, Round Rock ISD
From Round Rock ISD’s public statement on the 2026 accountability ratings.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Round Rock didn’t just continue the work. It scaled the practice.

The following summer, every Round Rock principal and assistant principal was trained on the ILT meeting preparation protocol. What had started as a nine-campus coaching practice became a district initiative and districtwide expectation.

DISTRICTWIDE Every principal + AP

trained on the ILT preparation protocol.

A practice developed through the nine-campus engagement became an expectation across the district.

PARTNERSHIP 9 → 15

campuses in the partnership.

Round Rock retained all nine participating campuses and added six more for 2026–27.

LET'S TALK TEXAS

Start with what’s already underway.

Round Rock’s campuses did this inside the accountability system as it stands, with the leaders they already had—by changing what those leaders did with meetings already on their calendars. If your district has campuses in the same position, start with a conversation about what’s already underway.

→ A member of our Texas team will follow up with you.

Sources: Texas Education Agency 2026 A–F accountability ratings, covering the 2025–26 school year and released August 14, 2026; Round Rock ISD; NCES Common Core of Data, 2024–25.

About this data

How the rating years are labeled

TEA names a rating year for the school year it measures and publishes it the following August. The 2026 ratings are the 2025–26 school year, released August 14, 2026. The 2025 ratings are the 2024–25 school year. Tables on this page are labeled by school year, with TEA’s rating-year name alongside.

Where the accountability data comes from

All ratings and scale scores are TEA A–F accountability ratings, available publicly from:

The campus-level file

Campus figures come from “Round Rock 4 Year Comparison Accountability Performance,” an accountability workbook maintained by Round Rock ISD and shared with Relay in August 2026. It carries TEA scale scores and ratings for 2019 and 2022 through 2026 alongside district-internal fields — Learning Community, Tiers of Support, School Improvement status — that do not appear in TEA’s public files.

How it was verified

Three checks, each of which a reader can repeat. Round Rock ISD’s own public announcement of the 2026 ratings matches every figure cited here, including Joe Lee Johnson at 80/B up from 50/F and the statement that all previously D or F-rated campuses are now C or higher. The Texas Tribune’s Schools Explorer, which mirrors TEA data, lists Joe Lee Johnson at an overall B with Student Achievement C, School Progress B, and Closing the Gaps C — matching the workbook on all four. And every average and point change on this page was recomputed from campus-level scores rather than carried over from summary notes.

Enrollment and student demographics

Enrollment and free or reduced-price lunch eligibility figures are from the NCES Common Core of Data, 2024–25. These are not the same measure as TEA’s “economically disadvantaged” designation and should not be read as interchangeable with it.

What this data can and cannot show

These are TEA accountability outcomes for campuses during a period in which they partnered with Relay. This is not a controlled study, and nothing here is a claim that coaching alone caused the results.