Multiple local schools were given a lower letter grade by the state than in the past, but school officials question whether those grades are accurate or reliable.
This week, the Indiana Department of Education released A-F letter grades for local schools, which are based on a number of factors, including ISTEP scores.
Across the county, multiple schools saw their grades fall from last year, when schools were allowed to keep the same grades from the year before, if they chose. This year, schools were not allowed to do that.
School officials said there were bright spots in their grades, but the grades aren’t comparable to past years, since different formats of the ISTEP exam were used.
The 2016 grades are based on a new format of the ISTEP exam. And the prior year grades for many schools date back to 2014, when schools were using the old format of the test, Clark-Pleasant schools superintendent Patrick Spray said.
The grades are also based on multiple factors, Spray said.
Two Clark-Pleasant schools that scored Bs are based on entirely different factors, while schools that may have scored lower but showed more improvement got an A, he said.
“You just can’t calculate it,” Spray said.
“This is a broken system that I don’t think is really reporting anything to the public.”
In the Franklin school system, all schools scored a B, except Franklin Community Middle School, which got a C. And just a few months ago, the middle school was named a four-star school, Superintendent David Clendening said.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Clendening said.
Clendening said he isn’t focusing much on the grades, and instead plans to focus on assessments that show individual student growth, he said.
That is what schools should be measured on, Greenwood schools superintendent Kent DeKoninck said.
School officials want to know how the state will be measuring both student achievement and school performance in future years. Their suggestion is to look at individual student growth, which a lot of schools already measure and use to evaluate where students need extra help, he said.
And for schools, how they are performing should be measured based on multiple factors, including passing scores on SAT and ACT exams, graduation rates and college readiness, DeKoninck said.
That is how families grade schools now, by deciding where they will send their kids to school based on what the schools have to offer. So the state should put out the information to the public and let them decide how schools are performing, since that is a more meaningful assessment, he said.
“What does an A mean? And we obviously don’t have a good idea about what an A, B or C means,” DeKoninck said.
Center Grove assistant superintendent Jack Parker is looking forward to when the new assessment is in place statewide, and schools are being measured on similar assessments, instead of different tests and different factors for school grades.
“Right now, we are in limbo,” Parker said.
