Commerce High School earned a B in the latest state accountability ratings, narrowly missing an A, while two other Commerce ISD campuses received failing grades.
Superintendent Steve Drummond discussed the results in a video released Thursday ahead of the Texas Education Agency's publication of its 2026 accountability reports.
Commerce High School received an overall score of 88. The school earned a 90, an A, in the state's Closing the Gaps domain, along with scores of 87 in Student Achievement and 86 in School Progress.
Drummond described the high school's result as the strongest academic accountability performance he has seen during his more than 12 years in Commerce.
"We would have been the only high school in our 40-school comparison group in the state of Texas to achieve an A," Drummond said.
TEA uses 40-campus comparison groups to provide context for school performance, grouping campuses using factors including enrollment, grades served, economic disadvantage, student mobility, emergent bilingual enrollment and special education enrollment.
The results were substantially different at Commerce ISD's other two rated campuses.
Commerce Middle School received an overall score of 52, an F. The campus scored 56 in Student Achievement, 57 in School Progress and 40 in Closing the Gaps.
Drummond called the middle school's result "disappointing" and said some testing areas performed particularly poorly. He said the district has added new teachers in those areas and pointed to a new administrative team led by Michael Starling and Christie McIntosh, both of whom he said have experience improving struggling campuses.
Drummond said moving the middle school from a 52 to the 70 required for a C in a single year would be difficult. He set a more immediate goal of raising the campus above 60 and into the D range next year.
A.C. Williams Elementary also received an F, with an overall score of 59. The campus earned a 57 in Student Achievement, 58 in School Progress and 60 in Closing the Gaps.
The TEA report also identifies A.C. Williams as a Comprehensive Support and Improvement Progress school under the federal school-improvement system.
Drummond noted that A.C. Williams was close to escaping the failing range. He said a one-point improvement in any of its accountability domains could have been enough to move the campus from an F to a D.
The district has assigned school improvement officer Ginny Putman to work from A.C. Williams this year and is working with Region 10 and TEA on campus improvement efforts, Drummond said.
The sharply different results across Commerce ISD's campuses also prompted Drummond to question what Texas' accountability system measures.
"The STAAR test is increasingly a measure of a community's wealth," Drummond said, noting that a large majority of Commerce ISD students are economically disadvantaged.
TEA's accountability system does account for economic disadvantage in part of its methodology. For example, the state's Relative Performance calculation compares campus achievement with the percentage of students identified as economically disadvantaged. TEA lists 72.4% of students at A.C. Williams as economically disadvantaged; the campus received a 57 in Relative Performance.
Drummond said he disagrees with the state's overall assessment of Commerce ISD, but also said the high school's performance demonstrates that the district can produce stronger results despite those challenges.
"Commerce High School proves that it can be done and we can do better," Drummond said. "And that will be our goal going forward, to just get better."
Drummond said the district is not satisfied with the lower campus ratings and invited parents and community members with questions about the results to contact him.
"We have work to do at CMS and A.C. Williams," Drummond said, "but that work is being done."
