The following is a Q and A with superintendent of Midwest City-Del City Public Schools, Pam Deering, regarding the state’s new grading system that is being implemented this school year.
What is the A-F School Grading System?
The A-F School Grading System gives all schools and school districts in the state of Oklahoma a grade of A, B,C, D, or F, similar to grades given to students. The A-F grading system will be implemented for the 2012-13 school year based on data from the 2011-12 school year, and will be reported annually thereafter.
What is the law governing A-F?
In 2011, the Oklahoma State Legislature passed House Bill 1456, authored by State Representative Lee Denney (R-Cushing) and State Senator Clark Jolley (R-Edmond). Governor Mary Fallin signed HB 1456 into law in the spring of 2011. The text of the bill can be located at go.usa.gov/7q4.
Where can I find rules governing the implementation of A-F?
In compliance with the new state law directing an A-F School Grading System, the Oklahoma State Department of Education developed detailed rules for implementation of the reform. These rules were approved by the State Legislature and Governor Mary Fallin during the 2012 legislative session. The entire rules document can be found on the Oklahoma State Department of Education Website at go.usa.gov/7q2.
How is a school or district’s A-F grade calculated?
A-F Report Card grades are calculated using the following four categories:
• 33 percent of a school’s grade will be based on student achievement on state exams.
• 33 percent of the grade will be based on whole school performance factors such as student attendance rates, dropout rates, graduation rates, advanced course participation and performance, and more. Bonus factors are school climate surveys, and parent and community involvement.
• 17 percent of the grade is overall student growth.
• The remaining 17 percent is student growth of the bottom 25 percent of students
A letter grade will be awarded in each of these categories and combined to award an overall letter grade for a school. Districts will receive report cards based on the grades of all school sites in the district. The State Department of Education in April released a comprehensive A-F Report Card technical guide (go.usa.gov/7q1) to all Oklahoma school districts. The technical guide explains each factor used to determine grades and gives schools and districts a step-by-step methodology to calculate their own grades.
When can school and districts expect to receive their A-F grades?
Preliminary embargoed data was released in draft form to districts in late August. The districts have 30 days to review the data used to factor the grades and/or request review of the grade received. Once requests and corrections have been approved, report cards will be released to the public in early October.
What are some of the issues that schools have experienced with the verification of the data used in the report cards?
Verifying data for some of the calculations is difficult when you don’t have access to some of the data that the State used for its calculations. There is simply no way to ensure the validity of the State’s data without this information.
The formulas are extremely complicated and confusing to arrive at the final grade.
Arbitrary cut off scores and the formula that removes schools of certain sizes from being qualified for FOCUS Schools Designation mandated by the USDE waiver, not related to the A-F report card legislation, but tied to its implementation, is impacting and disrupting a school site for choice when the overall grade does not reflect such drastic measures.
The SDE waiver and the A-F report card requirements are not aligned as noted for #3 above. The subgroup is still based on NCLB requirements. Changes in the formulas have been made after the initial report cards were released.
SDE is not adequately staffed to respond to the many questions and concerns presented by school districts. Response times have been very slow, especially when dealing with a new accountability system, a limited appeal window, and the amount of data that each district has to review.
What is the district’s perspective or opinion regarding the report card and school designations?
• Extremely complicated, complex formula lacking in transparency.
• Unfairly labels some schools with a grade that can appear "average" to most, but are successful in many areas.
• Arbitrarily excludes some schools for qualifying for FOCUS designation when less than 25 students from a subgroup are tested.
• By exempting most small schools from the FOCUS designation, 121 schools of a larger size were identified regardless of higher student achievement. Having a designated number (121) appears to have identified schools with much higher achievement than those who were exempt.
• Student growth components are improvement (same student, same content area, next grade level).
What would you do to improve the A-F system?
• Request Legislative Interim Study to review all aspects of the System
• Propose legislation to more clearly define components and data
• Reduce complexity
• Move from A-F grading as Nation moves towards scales/rubrics for student achievement
• Reconsider NCLB Waiver components for school designations
What has Mid-Del done in the review of the grades to date?
District staff has met with site principals to review the preliminary grades received by the State Department of Education. Principals have also worked with their site staff to verify data for accuracy based on the data we have been given from the State Department of Education.
Despite the limited data, each school site has identified the following questions in determining how to progress academically:
• What was effective last year that you are going to continue next year?
• What are you going to eliminate this year that was not effective last year?
• What will you be doing differently this year to increase student learning?
• The goal for Mid-Del Schools is to model continuous improvement at each of our seventeen elementary schools, five middle schools and three high schools.
