Correction: Denise Airola, director of the Office of Innovation for Education at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, told the state Board of Education last week that “I have given an F out, but I haven’t done it lightly. In some cases it incentivizes and in other cases, it doesn’t.” The quote from Airola — a former teacher — was incorrectly attributed to another person in this article.
The Arkansas Department of Education proposed Thursday a process to assign A-through-F letter grades to the state's public schools.
But state Board of Education members were divided, voting 4-3 to allow the comprehensive proposal -- which outlines methods for evaluating the quality of the state's school districts -- to be vetted by the public in several hearings before its planned Nov. 1 implementation.
Legislators passed Act 696 of 2013 -- initiated by Republican state Sen. Jim Hendren of Sulphur Springs -- to require an annual school report card with an A-through-F grading system beginning with the 2014-15 school year. The purpose, the law said, is to identify the levels of improvement and the performance of each school.
Three state board members -- Jay Barth of Little Rock, Alice Williams Mahony of El Dorado and Joe Black of Newport -- voted against the measure, saying the public hearings and implementation were premature.
Mahony said the test data that will be used to assign the grades have not been collected yet.
"These are new methods and there is no data. The results will be skewered," Mahony said after the meeting.
Barth asked if a plea could be made to the state Legislature for more time to carry out the requirement and to gather more data.
"The whole validity of the whole endeavor starts to go away," Barth said, adding that he is worried about giving school districts a letter grade using a rushed process and incomplete data.
Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood said that he has already made that request to the state's lawmakers.
"I've got really strong feelings about this, but it's another one that I lost," Wood said.
The law designated the value of each letter grade as a school being:
• A -- Exemplary.
• B -- Achieving.
• C -- Needs Improvement.
• D -- Needs Improvement Focus.
• F -- Needs Improvement Priority.
The law charged the state board with creating the grading methods and establishing rules for implementing the process.
The proposal, which was created by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's Office of Innovation for Education, bases the individual grades on student performance on grade-level standards in math and literacy; progress in meeting annual performance, growth, and graduate rate targets; graduation rates where applicable; and the size of achievement gaps among groups in the school.
A system for weighting the grades based on different characteristics of the schools -- such as poverty level and school size -- was included in the proposal, said Denise Airola, director of the Office of Innovation for Education.
Under the weighted grading system, schools can earn extra points according to how individual students score on standardized tests. A school earns 0.25 of a point for students scoring basic on tests; 1 point for proficient; and 1.25 points for advanced scorers.
Airola explained to the board that schools will also be awarded extra points based on their level of improvement and meeting specific targets.
Board Vice Chairman Toyce Newton of Crossett said the weighted scores may have the unintentional result of "overshadowing the intent of the legislation."
"It will skewer the people's perception or understanding," Newton said.
Mahony disagreed, saying that she believes the proposal is "scientific."
"I believe an F is an F," she said.
Barth took issue with the fact that Alternative Learning Environment schools -- separate campuses for at-risk students -- would be included in the letter grade assessment.
Wood said the law requires that the Alternative Learning Environment schools be assessed a letter grade, but said that he believes the board has some flexibility in how those campuses are graded.
"It may be a special case," Wood said.
Barth also expressed dismay that the evaluation excluded science and was based primarily on math and literacy.
The model initially included a science grading component, but it was later omitted, Airola said. She added that science adds more information to be assessed, therefore making the method more complicated.
Superintendents, state Education Department staff members, and business and policy leaders, among others, said in conversations during the creation of the grading proposal that science "doesn't tell you too much more than what the math and literacy tells you" in assessing a school's performance, Airola said.
Barth encouraged the board to reconsider adding science to the assessment measures.
"We know what's happened to science education. We know how bad those science scores are -- they're disastrous," he said.
Mahony -- a former teacher -- expressed skepticism that the letter grades would produce the result legislators intended.
"I have given an F out, but I haven't done it lightly," she said. "In some cases it incentivizes and in other cases it doesn't."
Metro on 08/15/2014