An imperfect test: A-F grades have their flaws; state is considering changes

When the Indiana Department of Education released A-F grades Wednesday for about 2,100 public, private and charter schools across the state, reactions from area public school superintendents were by and large the equivalent of a frowny face drawn in red marker atop a student’s test.

Garrett-Keyser-Butler Community School District Superintendent Dennis Stockdale was direct and to the point in his evaluation of the grades.

“The current system for school grades is a flawed system that in no way is an accurate accountability measure to measure school and student success,” he said. “I welcome the opportunity to publicly debate this flawed system.”

That’s coming from someone who saw his overall corporation grade rise from a C the year before to a B.

Randy Zimmerly, superintendent of Westview School Corp., which again earned an A overall, was even more succinct in his assessment.

“I just really, really do not see the value at all in this system,” he said.

Accountability grades for schools — whether they’re the A-F grades handed out beginning in 2012 or the prior incarnation of “exemplary,” “commendable,” “academic progress,” “academic watch” and “academic probation” — have long been a sticking point for school corporations. The grades, many administrators say, are overly simplistic. They don’t reflect the day-to-day challenges educators face in helping kids learn. And they don’t place enough value on the educational growth students demonstrate in the classroom.

Elementary and middle school grades are largely based on students’ ISTEP+ test scores; high school grades take into account ISTEP+ English and algebra end-of-course assessment scores, graduation rates and Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate test scores, among other factors.

Preliminary school grades, which are determined using data from the previous school year, are distributed to school corporations in the fall. The school corporations then can choose to appeal the grades to the Department of Education if they believe there’s an error.

The DOE examines each appeal, decides whether to accept or deny it, then presents all of the school grades to the Indiana State Board of Education for approval. Once approved, the school grades are released to the public.

In addition to their public-relations significance, school grades play an important role in, for example, teacher evaluations and raises.

And yet, educators and those involved in crafting education policy tend to hold the A-F school grades at arm’s length.

“I never liked the system myself,” said state Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, chairman of the Senate’s Education and Career Development Committee.

He recalled attending a three-hour presentation on the A-F grading system when it was first introduced. “I sat there and thought, how in the world can it take three hours to explain a system?” he said.

The system, regardless of how long it takes to explain, isn’t going away. School accountability measures are required under state law, and they’re also a condition of a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law that the U.S. Department of Education has issued to Indiana.

By using A-F, the grades are meant to be easily understood. But the number-crunching behind the grades is complex, and a student’s performance is judged against a cohort of peer students from across the state, which can make it hard for educators to divine what needs to be done to improve achievement within their schools.

“It’s very difficult, even for us, to get a handle on: How do you improve?” said Chris Daughtry, superintendent of Central Noble Community School Corp., which received a B grade this year compared to last year’s C grade.

“You kind of don’t know what your apples are being compared to. Are they being compared to apples, or are they being compared to oranges?”

The biggest criticism of the A-F grades is they don’t give enough weight to students’ improvement. Students taking the ISTEP+ presently are lumped into three categories based on their proficiency in meeting the standards the test is designed to gauge: did not pass; pass; and “pass-plus.”

A student can make a lot of academic progress during a school year and still not pass the ISTEP+. That could hurt a school’s A-F grade.

For much of the past year, a panel of educators from across the state has been tasked with improving the A-F school grades to address the concerns and criticisms leveled at them. One of the chief changes would be to further divide the did-not-pass, pass and “pass-plus” categories so there’s more emphasis placed on students’ academic growth.

Under the proposal, did not pass would be divided into three categories; pass would be divided into three categories; and “pass-plus” would be divided into two. The State Board of Education is considering the proposal.

“That’s hopefully going to be more representative of what schools are doing,” said Todd Bess, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Principals.

“I think what’s going on now is a pretty wholesale correction to the system,” he added.

The proposed changes to the A-F formula also should help school corporations set targets for boosting each student’s achievement, said Cari Whicker, a sixth-grade language-arts teacher at Riverview Middle School in Huntington and northeast Indiana’s representative on the State Board of Education since 2012.

“Students — and when I say students I mean their teachers and parents, too — will know what their target is at the beginning of the year,” she said.

But even those changes may lead to future changes. As long as accountability measures are required by law, there always will be a need to adjust them.

“No one’s ever going to devise a formula that fits every school exactly,” said Lou Ann Baker, spokeswoman for the state’s Center for Education and Career Innovation.

Despite the consternation some have with the A-F school grades, accountability can have its benefits.

“Accountability is not a bad thing,” Daughtry said. “It makes people want to work.”

And the grades, even with the publicity they receive, don’t result in much griping among the general public, Kruse said.

“People don’t come to me and complain about that, because they know schools are in an all-out effort to do the best they can,” he said.

The percentage of Indiana schools earning A’s this year was 54 percent, an increase of 9 percent from the previous year. The percentage of schools garnering F’s fell from 5.4 percent last year to about 4 percent this year. A main reason for that is the spotlight the grades cast on schools to show improvement.

“I hope people at least take that viewpoint that kids have worked hard. Teachers have worked hard,” Whicker said.

“We’re seeing those positive trends,” she said.

Loraine Vaughn, superintendent of Fremont Community Schools, which again earned an A this year, said the grade does help validate her staff’s efforts.

“Our teachers are doing a fantastic job,” she said.

But then Vaughn added: “We don’t put all of our faith in that letter grade.”

Appeals process under review

A-F school grades have their critics. So, too, does the process in place for school corporations to appeal those grades.

At its meetings in October and this month, the Indiana State Board of Education heard complaints about the appeals process, including those from West Noble School Corp. Superintendent Dennis VanDuyne, who argued West Noble High School should have an A instead of the B grade it received because the Indiana Department of Education incorrectly included four students who had left the high school in determining the high school’s score.

Concerns about accuracy delayed the release of the grades by three weeks.

At their Wednesday meeting when they approved the school grades, State Board of Education members allowed West Noble and other school corporations to continue with their appeals, even though the Indiana Department of Education’s window for considering appeals had closed.

The board is expected to take up the appeals process at its December meeting.

“I think that the board very strongly felt that we wanted a process that was transparent,” said Cari Whicker, the northeast Indiana representative on the board. “We want it to be as reflective of a school’s grade given the current system.”