Itasca Independent School District (Isd)

The Itasca Independent School District (Isd) serves approximately 637 students across three schools—Itasca Elementary, Itasca Middle, and Itasca High School—in a small, rural Texas community with high economic disadvantage, as over 65% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

The district's biggest challenge is a severe math crisis at Itasca Middle, which ranks in the 7th percentile statewide and has received zero stars for three consecutive years. In the 2024-2025 school year, 0% of 7th graders and only 8.7% of 8th graders were proficient in math, directly feeding into Itasca High School's low Algebra I EOC proficiency rate of 9.09%. Despite having the highest per-student spending ($15,471) and smallest class sizes (9.1:1 ratio), the high school only ranks in the low 20th percentile, suggesting it spends more to remediate students who arrive poorly prepared. Meanwhile, Itasca Elementary experienced a dramatic 30-percentile-point drop in ranking from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026, driven by a collapse in 3rd-grade math proficiency from 47.22% to 14%.

One bright spot exists: at Itasca Middle, 75% of 8th graders taking the Algebra I EOC were proficient in 2025-2026, far exceeding the state average of 54.03%. This shows the school can achieve high results with accelerated students, but this success is not reaching the general population. The district's overall ranking in the 9th percentile places it among Texas's most challenged schools, and the elementary school's decline signals that incoming students will be even less prepared. For parents, the key takeaway is that while small class sizes and higher spending exist, the district urgently needs targeted math interventions, especially at the middle school level, to break the cycle of low performance.