State to discuss school letter grades
System sparked confusion over integrity of the scores
The Arizona State Board of Education on Monday will discuss revisions to the school letter-grade system that has sparked criticism and confusion among educators, parents and state lawmakers since the grades were released earlier this month.
The Board of Education had spent more than a year creating a new accountability system that grades schools’ quality on an A-F scale.
Some education leaders and observers, in the weeks leading up to the release, said they believed the new system is too complicated for teachers, parents and the public to benefit.
Other school officials questioned the integrity of the data after they received their grades.
Arizona lawmakers who helped make school letter grades a state requirement expressed disappointment in the system as well.
But perhaps what has caused the most confusion among educators was an Oct. 6 memo the board sent to schools indicating that more changes to this year’s school letter grades could be on the way.
The grades in the future will decide which schools get a boost in state dollars in the form of “results-based funding.” And schools that repeatedly earn failing marks are subject to state oversight — or closure if they are charter schools.
The board finalized the grading system at its Sept. 25 meeting and said the grades that K-12 schools were set to receive Oct. 9 would be their definitive rankings for the 2016-17 school year.
Instead, they were labeled “preliminary,” with the caveat that there could be “potential revisions” to the grades’ calculations based on public feedback and data review.
The “preliminary” grades also list several schools with grades “under review” because schools either appealed their grade or did not fit the traditional K-8 or high-school configuration.
Monday’s board meeting, which starts at 9 a.m., includes expanded time for public comment.
Here’s what we know about Arizona school letter grades.
State Board of Education emails obtained by The Arizona Republic show the earliest indication that the state board planned to revisit school grades for the 2016-17 school year was on Oct. 3.
The Arizona Charter Schools Association had raised concerns to board staff members about many charter schools receiving two letter grades (for example, one letter grade for elementary and a different grade for high school) and how that would affect accountability decisions.
Correspondence from the email addresses of Tim Carter, president of the State Board of Education, and Karol Schmidt, the board’s executive director, between Sept. 24 and Oct. 9 showed that on Oct. 4, Schmidt wrote that several of these schools would have their grades listed “under review.” The board would discuss the issue further at its Oct. 23 meeting, according to emails.
On Oct. 6, the state board sent a memo to school superintendents on “potential revisions” to the “preliminary” grades.
While these emails don’t make clear as to when and how, exactly, the rest of the board members were notified of the change in plans, Schmidt said calls were placed to members before the memo was sent to schools.
But some board members appeared to be caught off guard about what the new plans actually meant.
On Oct. 9, shortly after the state published its “preliminary” grades, one board member, Vail Unified School District Superintendent Calvin Baker, emailed Schmidt and Alicia Williams, the board’s deputy executive director, asking about a discrepancy in his schools’ grades.
In the email — whose subject line reads, “Why Change in Status?” — Baker asks why one of his schools, Vail Academy and High School, has its grade listed
as “under review” when previous results showed it had earned an A grade on the K-8 and high-school rubrics.
Williams, the deputy director, said it had to do with the school’s non-traditional configuration — all schools that don’t neatly fit under the K-8 or high-school categories are listed as “under review,” she said.
Baker later responded, copying Carter and Schmidt:
“I just wish to express my concern that there are messages going out and decisions being made that are credited to the ‘SBE,’ ” Baker wrote, referencing the State Board of Education in abbreviation.
Baker continued: “Of course, the ‘SBE’ is only the ‘SBE’ when it is convened in a public meeting. In the last public meeting (Sept. 25) the SBE approved a method for grading K-12 schools. Grades were awarded accordingly. Then, the decision and the message from the SBE changed. Except ... the SBE did not meet and change it.
“It is difficult to own and explain a decision credited to the SBE that I was not aware of it ... let alone never voted on. Please don’t take the above comments personally. Not angry or upset. And, I do understand the complexity. Just stating reality.”
There are 169 Arizona schools with grades currently listed as “under review,” according to Catcher Baden, a deputy director for the Education Board.
Some of the schools in the database are listed twice because of their non-typical configuration, Baden said. Of those 169 schools, 71 filed appeals with the state board.
The reasons for those appeals varied. The Madison Elementary School District and others appealed some of their school grades because they contended the grades were not accurately calculated.
Some schools appealed because of incidents or malfunctions that disrupted the testing window for AzMERIT, which accounts for 90 percent of the grades for elementary schools.
The Buckeye Elementary School District and others appealed some of their grades because of the state’s persisting shortage of qualified teachers.
One school, the George Gervin Prep Academy in south Phoenix, appealed its grade because of “extenuating circumstances beyond the control of the school.”
In documents supporting its appeal, the academy references a teacher who threatened suicide, behaved inappropriately with students and “seemed immensely affected by the presidential election of which he began to show signs of mental illness.”
George Washington Academy, a charter school that state Sen. Sylvia Allen helped bring to Snowflake, was one of the 35 schools that received an F grade.
Allen, a Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said after the release of the grades that the academy — where her grandchildren attend school — is “not an F school.”
Daniel Scarpinato, spokesman for Ducey, said “more work is needed” on the current grading system.
House Education Chairman Paul Boyer said the Legislature left it to the Board of Education to determine how to implement the letter grades.
“It’s not our role to tell the board how they should implement the policy,” he said.
Boyer said it was a complex issue and the board was under a time crunch to develop a plan.
“Not to criticize, but I do believe the formula was overly complex,” Boyer said.
In particular, Boyer said, the formula in its attempt to reward schools that make large improvements indirectly penalizes schools that already perform well and so don’t have as much room to improve.
Allen sponsored and Boyer co-sponsored the 2016 legislation that made it a state requirement to issue schools letter grades. The legislation, which also gave the state board the autonomy to decide how the system would work, passed unanimously in the state House and Senate.
The new grading system adopted by the state board included new wrinkles that attempted to address longstanding criticism that schools with the highest percentages of student poverty earned the lowest marks.
This included more emphasis on how students improve on the state’s standardized test, AzMERIT, over time. The grading system also calculates that student growth two separate ways.
But Peter Bezanson, CEO of BASIS.ed, said the current system does not fairly assess elementary schools that perform well because of how the state calculates student growth on AzMERIT.
“Simply put, the formula does not work to measure academic quality at schools that have students who have reached high levels of proficiency,” Bezanson said.
In an interview, Carter, the board president, said most of the feedback he has received from schools has been positive.
Republic reporter Alia Beard Rau contributed to this article.