Arizona releases final grades in school report card for 2017

Arizona’s State Board of Education released its finalized 2017 letter grades on Monday, after a bumpy rollout of preliminary grades in October.

More than 300 schools got an “A,” while 38 received an “F.” Many schools, 602, got a “B” grade, 478 were graded “C” and 158 ended up with “D’s.”

Compared with preliminary grades, fewer schools got “D” and “C” grades, while more received “A” grades. Eleven schools remain under review and 118 were not rated.

About 90 percent of a K-8 school’s grade relies on AzMERIT testing: 30 percent is based on the amount of students at schools with proficient scores on the tests, 50 percent is based on students’ testing improvement from year to year and 10 percent is based on English-language-learner growth and proficiency. The last 10 percent is based on variety of factors, including chronic absenteeism rates and inclusion rates of students with disabilities.

The board voted 8-1 on Monday to approve finalized scores to set the letter grades. Superintendent Diane Douglas was the lone dissenting vote. She criticized AzMERIT testing, questioning whether the scores — and the letter grades that rely on those scores — were reflective of student achieve-

ment.

“We do have to set these, but I feel like it’s grossly unfair to everyone within our education system, our districts, our students,” she said.

The State Board of Education released preliminary grades in October, but went back to the drawing board on several points in the ensuing months, tinkering with data and coding.

Dozens of schools contested their letter grades, while others raised concerns about the actual data used to tabulate their grade.

The board made more than a few changes since it released the preliminary grades.

Some criticized the earlier grades for depending too much on improvement, which meant that already high-achieving students were penalized for staying at the highest level, according to documents from the State Board of Education. The board voted to award more growth points to high achieving students than it had previously awarded.

Students improving in eighth-grade math also received adjusted, higher points in the growth category.

The board also adopted a model to grade hybrid schools — those not operating under a traditional K-8 or 9-12 format. That applied to mostly charter and rural schools.

Many of the BASIS school grades were listed as under review in October. Several BASIS schools were classified as “hybrid” models. The CEO of the charter operator criticized the grading system for penalizing high-achieving students. In the finalized system, 13 of 17 BASIS schools received an “A” grade, three got “B” grades and one, BASIS Prescott, did not get a rating.

The letter-grade accountability system, paused in 2014, often caught criticism that schools with the highest percentages of student poverty earned the lowest marks. In weighing improvement so heavily, this year’s system sought to address that criticism. However, an analysis from The Arizona Republic of preliminary grades found that schools with “D” and “F” letter grades were more likely to have high percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty.

Data from the State Board of Education shows that the finalized letter grades similarly relate to poverty. Schools with low free and reduced-price lunch populations (0 to 30 percent) were 11 times more likely to receive an “A” than schools with high free and reduced-price lunch percentages.

Kino Junior High School in Mesa is the only junior high in the Mesa Public Schools district to receive a “D” in both in the preliminary and finalized grades — 86 percent of the school’s students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Principal Keiko Dilbeck said in an interview in February that the grade felt crushing and worried it would hurt her school’s reputation.

“When the state says this is the only thing you can get validation for, that’s the only thing we can hang our hat on,” she said.

Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, introduced Senate Bill 1411 this year, proposing an expansion of the letter grade system into an online dashboard.

The dashboard would provide more specifics on school letter grades, including indicators like test performance, graduation rates and other factors to give parents a more clear picture of a school.

“I think parents just want to be able to go someplace to find information on schools,” Allen told The Arizona Republic. “If you just get one grade, it’s hard to understand, especially if it’s just about a test.”

The bill awaits a final vote from the House. If passed, the Legislature would direct the Department of Education to create the dashboard and put it online for parents.

Allen said she wants to work with the Department of Education to expand the dashboard further next year, adding in a place where a school can “brag” about its points of pride, like a winning girl’s soccer team.

The State Board of Education has said it will also continue to work to refine the letter grading system for next year and is scheduled to vote on adjustments in May, according to a news release.

Douglas, before voting against approving the letter grades, read a letter in which an eighth-grader called AzMERIT testing “dreadful” and “boring.”

The superintendent continued to criticize the letter grading system in the meeting, pointing out that the test isn’t high stakes for students and so they don’t try hard to perform well, even though the letter grades can have big impacts on students.

Parents use letter grades to help decide where to send their children. If fewer students are enrolled at a school, it gets less funding. Administrators and teachers have also said that a low grade is demoralizing for a community.

“We’ve seen principals ... talk about the impact that it has had on their letter grades, their communities, based on what?” she said.