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What is the Center for Academic Review?
The Center for Academic Review (CAR), located at the Region 7 Education Service Center provides technical assistance and support to the Texas Education Agency’s offices of Educator Systems Support, Instructional Materials and Implementation, and School Improvement. CAR operationalizes the academic review process in statewide initiatives, including the Effective Schools Framework (ESF), Texas Strategic Leadership (TSL), and Strong Foundations Planning (SFP). The Center for Academic Review is responsible for training, data collection and analysis, centralizing score collection, analyzing results, and creating statewide reports.  

What is the academic review?
The academic review measures the inclusion of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS), grade appropriateness, and alignment to the TEKS using a sample of unique student assignments from a campus or district. The academic review provides insights to campus and district leaders regarding student access to HQIM, which allows students to engage more deeply and meaningfully with the Texas standards and supports teachers in ensuring all students have access to high-quality and rigorous grade-level content. 

What are the RBIS?
As part of a broader strategy to significantly increase the number of students in Texas who have access to HQIM, TEA has developed a set of Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS) to articulate the key instructional shifts that are necessary to bring rigorous instruction to life for students. RBIS are:
  • a set of research-based practices that highlights common misconceptions in the field.
  • topics that require conceptual or philosophical changes in approach to instruction.
  • a set of practices that are supported by research and should be present in classrooms, regardless of instructional materials.
  • the science of how students best learn math and reading in K-12.
  • a demonstration of why HQIM is important and what is required to implement HQIM well.

How are assignments evaluated using the RBIS?
Reading Language Arts RBIS Math RBIS
RBIS Alignment measures alignment with research-based instructional practices in the following areas.
  • Foundational Literacy Skills (where applicable) assesses the opportunity students have to engage in intentional practice with phonics and word analysis.
  • Text Complexity measures whether assignments provide students with opportunities to engage with complex, high quality text(s).
  • Knowledge Coherence assesses whether the assignment provides students with an opportunity to build knowledge and develop vocabulary.
  • Text-Based Responses measures the opportunity students have to justify and support their thinking by using evidence found in the text.
RBIS Alignment measures alignment with research-based instructional practices in the following areas.
  • Depth and Coherence of Key Concepts evaluates the opportunity students have to demonstrate a deep understanding of essential concepts for the course.
  • Conceptual and Procedural Understanding evaluates the level of student opportunities to engage in both conceptual understanding and procedural skills as required by the TEKS.
  • Productive Struggle gauges student access to and expectation to complete appropriately challenging tasks.
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