The Fort Bend ISD schools attended by students living in Telfair now have Exemplary or Recognized ratings from the Texas Education Agency, which just released its 2009 Accountability Ratings. Cornerstone Elementary, located onsite in Telfair, and Sartartia Middle School are both rated Exemplary, the highest of the four ratings assigned by the TEA, and one earned by only 25.8% of Texas public schools in 2009. An Exemplary rating means that a campus must have at least 90 percent of its students meet or exceed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) standard on each subject, including Reading, English/Language Arts, Math, Writing, Social Studies and Science. A campus must also have a dropout rate of 2 percent or less to earn an Exemplary rating. 2009 is the first year that Cornerstone Elementary has received an Exemplary rating, while Sartartia Middle School had earlier achieved that distinction. Kempner High School, where Telfair students are zoned to attend, increased its rating to Recognized, signifying that students met 75 percent of the TAKS standard on each subject. Statewide, 35.2% of Texas schools earned a Recognized rating in 2009. “We applaud the students and faculty of all of the great Fort Bend ISD schools serving Telfair for their excellence in achievement,” said Heather Gould, marketing director for Newland Communities, developer of Telfair. “We also congratulate all the parents and community members for helping to make Telfair and Fort Bend ISD one of the best places in the nation to get a great primary and secondary education.” The 2009 TEA ratings are the latest good news about Telfair schools. A recent study by Newsweek included Kempner High School on a list of the nation’s top 1,500 public high schools, meaning that it ranks among the top 6% of all 27,000 public high schools nationwide. The Newsweek study ranked schools based on the number of students taking Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests, divided by the number of graduating seniors.