Letter-grading plan for schools will go on view

Accountability aim of system

Arkansas' more than 1,000 public schools are on the brink of being graded with the same A to F rating system that the schools apply to their students.

The letter-grade system, required by changes in state law in 2013, is in the final stages of development. If approved by the state Board of Education later this year, the more familiar and meaningful letter grades will replace an older, little-noticed practice of rating schools on a 1 to 5 scale.

The system aims to provide accountability in an easy-to-understand format for parents and the general public. The law has no penalties directly tied to the low grades, but the state has other ways to identify and address poorly-performing schools.

Arkansas will join at least 14 other states in using A-F letter grades, according to a December analysis by the Denver-based Education Commission of the States. Some of those are Florida, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina.

The Arkansas plan takes into account school results on state-required student tests, any year-to-year gains on the state tests, the size of achievement gaps among student groups and, if applicable, a school's graduation rate. It also includes any gaps in graduation rates among student groups.

The school grading system would, by law, be applied to each school's results on last spring's state-mandated Benchmark and End-of-Course exams in math and literacy. The school-by-school grades would be released later this year, possibly in November when the state releases information showing whether schools and districts met annual achievement goals.

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's Office of Innovation for Education developed the grading system for the Arkansas Department of Education.

Denise Airola, the Office of Innovation director, said the recommended proposal was one of nearly two dozen grading scale models considered over the course of a year. The work was done in consultation with state Department of Education staff, as well as leaders of superintendent and teacher organizations, representatives of philanthropic organizations and education statisticians.

"It is a very stakeholder-driven process," Airola said, adding that the participants were asked what kinds of information they wanted the letter grades to convey about the schools to parents and communities.

The proposed system, which will be the topic of a 1:30 p.m., Sept. 8 public hearing at the state Education Department's headquarters, 4 Capitol Mall, in Little Rock, pulled components from other rating systems but the final product is unique to Arkansas, Airola said.

Richard Abernathy, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, which is an organization of superintendents, principals and other school system leaders, said earlier this week that he had mixed feelings about rating schools. Letter grades may be easier for the public to understand but still fall short of fully informing parents about what is happening at a school, he said.

"Some schools may have outstanding test scores, but a school with lower scores and high poverty students may be doing a better job," he said, adding that not every facet of a school's operation can be included in a rating. "People try to make rating schools simple, but it's very complex."

He said some states, such as Oklahoma, are rethinking their use of letter grades.

Airola said the developers of the proposed grading system took into consideration how a school's characteristics -- such as size of enrollment or student poverty level -- affected a school's grade or rating.

"Ultimately, what we did was create a model that mitigated the impact of school characteristics to the best of our abilities, while keeping it simple and clear and including the elements that stakeholders indicated they wanted and valued," Airola said.

The developers also considered adding other components to the grading formula, such as the results on state-required science and biology exams. However, they concluded that the science scores complicated the formula without making much of a difference in a school's grade, Airola said.

The selected model was tried using existing test data from both 2013 and 2014, Airola said.

The state Education Board voted 4-3 earlier this month to send the A-F grading proposal out to a public hearing.

The narrow vote was at least partly a reflection of questions and concerns about applying a new grading system at a time when the state was making a transition from the old Benchmark and End-of-Course exams in literacy and math to a new testing system. The new grading system would be used only once, before students in grades three through 11 begin taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) exams. The new exams will be given in Arkansas next spring.

"We all know we have new tests coming out in 2015," Airola said. "Nobody has data from that yet to model what the school grades will look like using the same methodology."

Once the new tests are given and data from them are collected, the same type of trials would take place to make sure the grading system holds up with the new data, Airola said. "If it doesn't, you would make the necessary adjustments to achieve appropriate results."

The grading plan calls for the letter grades to reflect student performance levels on state exams, the accomplishment of preset achievement goals, the graduation rate where applicable, and the achievement- or graduation-rate gap among student groups at risk of school failure and student groups not considered to be at risk.

Each school can earn up to 300 points on the basis of those components. Schools earning 270 or more points would be assigned an A. Those schools with 240 to 269 points would be given a B. Schools with 201 to 239 points would qualify for a C and those schools with 180 to 209 points would receive a D.

Each of the components of the grading system requires its own set of calculations.

For example, to determine the number of points earned by a school for student performance, the number of students who earned a "basic" score on state-required Benchmark and End-of-Course math and literacy tests would be multiplied by .25. The number of students who earned proficient scores would be remain unchanged. And the number of students scoring at advanced levels would be multiplied by 1.25.

The results of those weighted calculations would be added and the sum divided by the total number of test scores at a school, including the number of below-basic scores, for which 0 points are awarded. The result would be multiplied by 100 to determine a school's points for student performance.

There is a different multistep calculation to give a school points for improvement or meeting some or all of its annual achievement goals.

Each school has a number of previously set "annual measurable objectives," or goals for the percentages of students scoring at proficient or better on each of the state tests. There are goals for each grade level at a school on each math and literacy test.

The proposed grading formula would give a school 55 points if a school meets none of its achievement targets in a school year and 95 points if it meets them all. The school would get some number of points between 55 and 95 if it meets some but not all of its achievement targets. Schools have varying numbers of targets based on the different tests that are given. A high school may only have two achievement targets. An elementary school may have literacy and math test targets for each of grades three through five.

Points also are given for a school's graduation rate, if applicable, and for the achievement gap or graduation gap between all students and at-risk students at a school. At-risk students are those who are from low-income families, do not speak English as a first language and/or are special education students.

A school earns 3 to 6 points if the achievement gap and/or graduation gap between students is relatively small and no points if the gap is average. The school loses 3 to 6 points if a gap is large.

For example, a school can receive 3 points if the achievement gap between at-risk students and students not at-risk is between 12 and 15 percentage points. The school gains 6 points if the gap is less than 12 points.

The proposed formula for calculating points for a high school is: (Weighted performance + Gap adjustment) + (Improvement) + (Graduation rate + Gap adjustment.)

For schools without graduation rates the formula is: (1.5) x (Weighted performance + Gap adjustment) + (1.5)x(Improvement). The 1.5 multiplier is used to put the scores on a scale of 300 possible points.

Lawmakers in 2013 changed state law to require the Arkansas Department of Education to include on each school's annual performance report a single overall indicator of each school's performance level.

Act 1429 of 2013 established the required components for calculating a single indicator of a school's performance.

Act 696 of 2013 specifically required the application of A through F letter grades.

Copies of the proposed Rules and Rules on school ratings are available from the Arkansas Department of Education, Office of General Counsel, 4 Capitol Mall, Room 404-A, or from the "Rules" link on the Arkansas Department of Education's website: arkansased.org.

A section on 08/30/2014

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