Public schools likely to receive lower marks in new state report

Fewer than 20 percent of Arizona’s district and charter schools are expected to receive an “A” letter grade when the state’s new rankings are publicly revealed Oct. 9, a drop from the last rankings three years ago.

The Arizona State Board of Education finalized the new school letter-grade accountability system Monday.

The rankings grade schools’ quality on an A-F scale and, for elementary schools, rely heavily on how well students performed on the state’s standardized test, AzMERIT.

Schools will begin receiving their letter grades this week, and they might look different than the grades they re-

ceived in 2014, the last year grades were distributed before a three-year hiatus.

The grading system in 2014 was based on a different assessment test, AIMS, that was considered less difficult than AzMERIT. The easier test led to higher passing rates and, thus, more A-graded schools. In 2014, nearly one-third of the state’s schools got an “A” ranking.

The Board of Education spent the past year developing the new grading system, which some educators have criticized because they believe it will not grade schools fairly or clearly and pressures schools to focus more on standardized testing.

While there is no federal mandate for states to label their schools, Arizona public schools are required under state law to be issued letter grades starting this fall.

Mark Joraanstad, executive director of Arizona School Administrators, said the letter-grade system is a “vast oversimplification unfortunately mandated by our state Legislature.”

“No credible researcher supports using proficiency data in assessing school quality,” Joraanstad told board members Monday. “Yet that’s what we’re doing.”

Here’s what the distribution of grades will look like for elementary schools, according to a Department of Education analysis:

» 18 percent of the state’s K-8 schools are expected to earn an “A.”

» 36 percent will receive a “B.”

» 30 percent will be graded a “C.” »13 percent of elementary schools will earn a “D”

» 3 percent will get an “F,” the lowest grade on the scale.

Elementary schools and high schools will be graded under two separate rubrics.

For high schools, the expected grade distributions will be similar, according to the Department of Education.

17 percent of the state’s high schools will earn an “A.”

34 percent will receive a “B.”

37 percent will be graded a “C.”

9 percent of high schools will earn a “D”

3 percent will get an “F,” the lowest grade on the scale.

AzMERIT test scores will determine 90 percent of elementary schools’ grades. About half of the grade for elementary schools will be determined by how well students improve on AzMERIT.

Standardized testing is less emphasized at the high-school level. Half of a school’s grade hinges on AzMERIT scores. Most of the rest of the grade depends on graduation rates and “college and career readiness indicators” aimed at getting students prepared for college or vocational program.

The actual “cut scores” are “based on the distribution of scores,” according to Joe O’Reilly, executive director of student achievement support at Mesa Public Schools.

Under these cut scores, elementary schools will get an “A” grade if they get at least 86 percent of the possible points on the grading rubric.

A school will earn a “B” grade if it earns at least 74 percent of points, and a “C” grade if it gets at least 62 percent of points.

State board members decided on these cut scores in part because of the reality of how students are currently performing on AzMERIT.

About 60 percent of Arizona’s students are not yet passing the reading and math portions of AzMERIT. Department of Education data showed that, had the state decided on a “traditional” cut score of 90 percent for an “A” grade, only 9 percent of elementary schools would have gotten a top mark.

Some state board members have said that they feel caught between a rock and a hard place in having to move forward with what they view to be a flawed grading system because the state requires schools be graded.

Many educators and board members have said that the new grading system might be too complicated to be useful for teachers and parents.

One of the most widely supported initiatives by the state board had been its effort in trying to reduce the correlation between low grades and high student poverty.

But student poverty still appears to factor in the grades schools will get.

Fifty-two percent of Arizona elementary schools that had a “low” percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch prices — an indicator of student poverty — are expected to receive an “A” grade, according to a state Department of Education analysis.

That same analysis found only 4 percent of schools with “high” percentages of students on free or reduced lunch would get an “A.”

Diane Douglas, Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, said the new system the board finalized is “the best of worst” options on the table.

Douglas, one of the most vocal critics of the letter-grade system, has said teachers and schools shouldn’t be graded on a system that mostly relies on AzMERIT scores.