Here’s what’s important about the state’s school grades.
If a school gets an A, it gets a sack full of results-based funding money—somewhere between $5,500 and $10,000 per teacher, depending on the number of low income students at the school. That’s a big friggin’ deal.
If a school gets an F, that means it failed as a school and is officially on notice. Different types of remedial actions can come into play. For a charter it can mean the school will be closed if it doesn’t improve. For a district, it can mean the school will come under state control, though it’s not clear what exactly that entails. That’s a big deal too.
The other three grades, the B’s, C’s and D’s, don’t result in any direct changes for the school. No money, no threats from the state. Each school and district determines how it’s going to deal with the B’s, C’s and D’s, and public may raise or lower its estimation of the schools, but that’s it.
So if a school moves in or out of an A or F designation, that really matters. If it moves up or down among the B, C and D grades, that’s not nothing, but it’s not a momentous change.
The state is going to make changes to the grading system, which means some school grades will change from what they are now. If you want to know what’s happening, don’t be distracted by some fancy new grading rubric. First, follow the money. The biggest battle will be over which schools get both an A and the money that comes with it. Then follow the charter closures. When someone like Republican Senator Sylvia Allen has a charter that received an F using the current grading system, something has to be done to make sure powerful people like her don’t come under the gun. If the B, C and D grades get scrambled a bit in the process, that doesn’t have much to do with the power struggles going on behind the scenes.
The Star‘s Tim Steller wrote an informative column a little while ago discussing how the grading system works, and how its attempts to be fair by making student growth a significant part of the grades resulted in complaints from some high rent schools, like BASIS, because they didn’t get the A’s they expected. Steller lays the situation out nicely, until he gets to what he calls a “workable solution” he has heard about for improving the system, a proposal for a “float weight” measure. At that point, he forgets to follow the money, so he loses sight of what’s really going on.
The “float weight” proposal says the grades for schools with high test scores should emphasize their scores over growth, while grades for schools with lower test scores should emphasize their growth over scores. It looks fair and reasonable at first glance, but it’s actually just a way to give A’s to more high rent schools. Lots of schools with high test scores and low growth scores, schools that received B or even C grades in the first sort, will move into A territory — including, most probably, every BASIS charter—and that will put them in the results-based funding money. Other schools will have to be moved out to make room.
State A grades are a finite resource. They can only go to 17 percent of schools, give or take a few percentage points. That’s because all A schools get results-based funding, and there’s only so much money to go around—about $37.6 million. Since the per-student dollar amount is written into law, the state can only move schools into A territory by moving others out. It’s a zero sum game. So the “float weight” measure is great for the high rent schools with top scores on the state test and lousy for schools that received an A under the original system but get booted out to make room for the “float weight” winners. That’s why the CEO of BASIS thinks it’s such a great idea.
I rarely agree with Robert Robb, the conservative columnist at the Republic, but I have to say, I’m with him when he says the state grading system is a turkey. But then he naively suggests it should be scrapped and replaced by a dual system: two separate lists, where one ranks schools by state test score and the other ranks schools by student growth. He didn’t just forget to follow the money, he ignored it completely. Arizona can’t scrap the state grading system so long as it has a law saying all schools with A grades get results-based funding.
When the revised school grades come out, probably in January, ignore the bright, shiny object, the fancy new scoring rules. They’re a distraction. Just watch for shifts in schools getting the coveted A’s and the dreaded F’s.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2017.
Pray tell how do you measure “Student Growth”? Answer: Standardized Testing!!
If we are concerned about the generally dismal state of our System of Public Education in Arizona, we would not hesitate to supports efforts at improvement. We cannot continue with our heads in the sand, and, under the shibboleth, Local Control of Education watch passively as our System of Public Education becomes, internationally, at best, Second Rate!! The viability of our Democracy and National Security are in jeopardy.
Given the wide classroom instructional heterogeneity within Public Schools/Districts, it is necessary to have some State objective measure so as to determine if Students are being taught properly and/or effectively learning the required body of information per Subject Area so as to achieve their Career Goals. This is the sole purpose of Standardized Assessment Examinations. AzMerit is such an Assessment Examination and will indicate the effectiveness of the Schools/Districts Academic Program, so that, if necessary, remedial action can be taken.
The dream of an accountability system that genuinely motivates schools to greater performance is almost undoubtedly a dog chasing its tail – an exercise in futility.
Look at Tennessee, they put in place the most advanced accountability system in the nation based solely on growth in 1992 and promptly started moving downward in their national rank. Here we are 25 years later and few point out that, even after adjustment for demographics and income, Tennessee, the “Education State” is one of the lowest-ranked states in the nation. The “smart” people did that to them.
The entire “growth” measure hope began with them. Why would focusing on growth cause a state to move lower? Answer: we don’t measure growth in preschool through 3rd grade, grades that accumulate more than half of all the measurable gain on the 13-year journey from k to 12. The ECLS study also showed that these grade levels were also predictive of later gains- thus even more important than their 55% share would suggest because they have an outsized effect on shaping attitudes towards school which have been shown to be the best predictor of gain.
Thus, the growth measure causes the system to look totally upward when it should have a dominant downward look towards the early grades.
Also, holding teachers accountable for that measured gain proved to be fools gold. Even small samples of Tennessee teachers show astonishing variance. Even pulling samples as small as ten teachers, one of those teachers would have a class gains place her in the top 10%, and another class put her in the bottom 10%. Half of all teachers nationwide who place in the top quartile of gains one year, don’t place in the top quartile the following year.
Thus, if you are an inexperienced education leader, you can whip your teachers around with essentially random feedback measures, damage their morale and not accomplish anything. When you subject rats to random negative feedback, unbelievable social pathology is the result. Humans aren’t much different.
Most education leaders know you have to protect your teachers from unhealthy feedback and focus on human perception of quality. Good teachers and good principals know the relative performance of all their teachers.
There is a way out of this mess towards clarity but when everyone believed that the sun revolves around the earth, they weren’t interested in what Copernicus had to say. And, this situation is even more complex than planetary orbits.
“….Most education leaders know you have to protect your teachers from unhealthy feedback and focus on human perception of quality. Good teachers and good principals know the relative performance of all their teachers….” Completely Meaningless!!!
Student/School Scores on AzMerit will indicate the Effectiveness of the Schools/Districts Academic / Instructional Programs, so that, if necessary, remedial action can be taken; that Students are being taught properly and/or effectively learning the required body of information per Subject Area so as to achieve their Career Goals.
Standard Testing (AzMerit) = Teacher/School/District Accountability!!!
Response to Francis
“….Most education leaders know you have to protect your teachers from unhealthy feedback and focus on human perception of quality. Good teachers and good principals know the relative performance of all their teachers….” Completely Meaningless!!!
Completely Meaningless? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Nationwide, 24% of parents rate their child’s school quality an “A” (Gallup poll, Aug 2015)
But, some schools have over 80% of their parents giving them an “A” rating and others are at zero.
The parent rating covers reading and math but also a thousand other things.
Less than 30% of Tucson Unified parents gave them an “A” rating last I looked. 75% of Chandler Unified parents gave them an “A” rating.
There is a difference. Maybe that’s why Chandler’s bond election passed 64% to 36% and Tucson Unified’s failed by 59 to 41%.
Chandler doesn’t sacrifice anything on academic gains by holding themselves accountable on parent measures, in fact, they gain. Their academic gains are well above the 50th percentile.
The parent measure also offers a different path to improving academic gains, a partnership with parents, not just looking at students like milk cows.
Plus it creates an overall healthier environment for schools where you value all teachers, history, science, PE, the arts and all subjects equally.
I know both sides of this equation. I was the legislator who brought letter grades and performance pay to Arizona.