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This week’s CommenTerry offers another A+ take on a controversial state education policy — school performance grades.

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CommenTerry

Bipartisan House Bill 435 would assign school performance grades to North Carolina’s public schools.  While the method of calculating those grades is subject to debate, the concept isn’t.  For several years, the NC Department of Public Instruction has assigned "grades" to schools based on their performance on state standardized tests under the ABCs of Public Education program (see Facts and Stats below).  Next year, the state plans to replace many of the ABCs tests with tests developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative, so the current method of ranking schools based on ABCs performance will be obsolete.

In 2012, the General Assembly approved a school performance grading system that picks up where the ABCs will leave off.  For elementary and middle schools, the law requires the State Board of Education to calculate a grade based on the percentage of students who score at or above proficient on annual assessments for mathematics, reading, and science.  For high schools, annual assessments of mathematics, English, biology, college readiness, and workplace readiness will be used to calculate the school performance grade.  Two other metrics — schools’ four-year graduation rates and pass rates for higher level mathematics courses — will also be factored into the high school formula.

The problem with HB 435 is that members of the state House tinkered, and subsequently watered down, the standards used to grade schools.  Some legislators complained that the grading system would produce "too many" failing grades.  According to a WRAL report, Democrat Representative and bill co-sponsor Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg worried that more than 70 percent of North Carolina public high schools would receive a D or F grade.  Rather than defend high standards for schools, the bill sponsors and supporters want to redesign the system.

Existing law requires the state to calculate school performance grades based directly on the performance of students on state tests.  HB 435, on the other hand, would direct the State Board of Education to determine grades by first calculating a performance composite, that is, an overall pass rate based on student performance on multiple tests in all grades.  The state would then determine the school grade by comparing the school’s performance composite to the statewide average.

The bill would also award "bonus" grades if a school meets one of three conditions.  First, a school’s grade would increase if it meets or exceeds growth (based on Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) scores).  An elementary school would receive a bonus for a pass rate at or above 80 percent for three consecutive years.  Likewise, a high school would receive a letter grade boost for reaching the 80 percent proficient mark for three consecutive years.

There are two problems with these "bonus" grades.  First, a full letter grade increase likely represents a disproportionate reward for achieving these goals.  Second, I am not aware of the research basis for setting the proficiency mark at 80 percent, particularly as the state embarks on an entirely new testing program.  Indeed, we may find that 80 percent is relatively easy (or prohibitively hard) to achieve.  There are just too many unknowns at this point.  To be consistent, bill sponsors should have based the achievement level for bonuses on the statewide average, rather than an arbitrary percentage.

Could the grading system passed last year use some refinement?  Sure.  A case could be made that the system should control for differences in student population, or, at minimum, report grades by race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.  But controls for student demographics are a far cry from changing the system out of fear for the number of schools that would receive a D or an F grade.  The former is a way to construct a system that provides an apples-to-apples comparison of schools.  The latter is public relations.

The odds of House Bill 435 passing the state Senate and becoming law in its current form are similar to the odds that my Pittsburgh Pirates will win the World Series — slim.   The Excellent Public Schools Act of 2013 includes sensible revisions to the existing grading system, such as reporting of schools’ value-added scores.  Legislators should build on that proposal, rather than start from scratch.

Facts and Stats

School "grade" distribution from the 2011-12 ABCs of Public Education

Category

Percent of Schools

Honor Schools of Excellence

11.2%

Schools of Excellence

0.6%

Schools of Distinction

28.4%

Schools of Progress

34.2%

No Recognition Schools

16.5%

Priority Schools

6.4%

Low-Performing Schools

0.6%

Alternative Schools

3.5%

Source: NC Department of Public Instruction, "The ABCs of Public Education," http://abcs.ncpublicschools.org/abcs/. (Note: Row percents do not total 100% because alternative schools that do not make expected growth also appear in the No Recognition category.)

Education Acronym of the Week

EVAAS — Education Value-Added Assessment System

Quote of the Week

"They’re going to be labeled as failing schools even if they’re working really hard and getting a lot of growth.  These are the schools that need our best teachers, and I don’t know how we’re going to get teachers to choose to go to a school that is getting a D or an F."

– Rep. Deb McManus (D-Chatham) quoted in "House panel modifies school grading system" by Matthew Burns, WRAL, April 2, 2013

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