Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a six-part series looking at Union County schools and the grades each received from the state. First, we look at how the state calculates each grade. Each installment moving forward will cover a different school district in Union County.
Every year, schools receive grades from the state. These grades are meant to be a representation of the quality of education that students at each school get and their projected success after graduation.
Arkansas released the grades for the 2017-18 school year in the beginning of October both to the general public and to the schools. The grades and breakdown are available at myschoolinfo.arkansas.gov.
In Union County, no school received an A grade. Four schools — Hugh Goodwin Elementary School, Parkers Chapel Elementary School, Parkers Chapel High School and Smackover Elementary School — received a B.
Eight schools — Barton Jr. High School, El Dorado High School, Junction City High School, Norphlet Elementary School, Norphlet Middle School, Northwest Elementary School, Smackover High School and Washington Middle School — received a C.
Two schools — Junction City Elementary School and Strong High School — received a D.
Three schools — Gardner-Strong Elementary School, Retta Brown Elementary School and Yocum Elementary School — received an F.
The grades were released in October this year rather than April due to requests from the schools and other stakeholders. The goal is to release them in October moving forward, said Deborah Coffman, assistant commissioner for Public School Accountability.
The grades are based on the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Index reported to the federal government. States were allowed to come up with their own system for giving schools report cards. In Arkansas, the Department of Education consulted with stakeholders in regards to what the grading system should be. These stakeholders included parents, teachers, school administrators, business leaders, education groups, students and community members, Coffman said.
“We did 10 regional meetings,” Coffman said. “We posted our draft plan on our website. We asked for stakeholder feedback, received stakeholder feedback. We had a group of practitioners look at our plan. Our ESSA steering committee looked at our plan. We had content advisory groups look at our plan and (we) received all of that feedback. We submitted that plan to the federal government and it was approved in January of 2018.”
When the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) puts out the grades, they’re based on a number of factors. These are data driven with information inputted by the school.
For elementary schools, the grades are based on achievement on ACT Aspire scores, worth 35 percent of the final grade; school value added growth, worth 50 percent; and school quality and student success, worth 15 percent.
High schools have the same areas with the percentages shifted slightly to add in graduation rate. The achievement is worth 35 percent, school value added growth worth 35 percent, school quality and student success worth 15 percent, and graduation rate worth 15 percent.
Elementary, middle and high schools also have different grading scales for what their number score translates to when looking at a letter grade.
When looking online at a particular school’s grade, the letter and its number equivalent are available under the school rating tab. This also shows the school’s superintendent and principal, what grade levels are taught at the school, the school’s address, the school’s website, the number of enrolled students with statistical breakdowns – race, low-income, English learner and special education – and the school’s ESSA grade with the grading scale used for that school.
The website also includes a tab for reports, which has the breakdown of information regarding grades under a section called ESSA School Index.
This section shows the school’s grade information with what the school scored in each category compared to other schools in the state. It also tells what the school scored compared to the state average.
Along the side, people can tell it to show specifically either weighted achievement, school value-added growth, school quality and student success, or graduation rate. Each category shows what the school scored in that section compared to the state average. It also allows people to search for similar schools based on enrollment, location or free/reduced lunch.
The weighted achievement area focuses on how students are doing on standardized tests. It looks at the ACT Aspire scores and the Multi-State Alternate Assessment (MSAA) for English Language Arts (ELA) and math.
Under the weighted achievement area, people can see how many students fall into each category – In Need of Support for 0 points, Close for 0.5 points, Ready for 1 point, or Exceeds for 1 or 1.25 points if the number of students in this area is not greater than the number of students in the lowest achievement level – and the points break down with the ADE’s math for how it got the school’s final score in that category.
When it comes to weighted achievement, each student has the potential of earning the school one point. To get the school’s actual score in weighted achievement, the number of awarded points is divided by the number of possible points to get a percentage. The website also breaks down how the subgroups scored. Subgroups look at a student’s race, whether a student is economically disadvantaged, English learners and students with disabilities.
The School Value-Added Growth also looks at students’ MSAA and ELA. The growth metric looks at how a student has been scoring on past tests, how they scored that year and compares it to how the student was expected to score. The state then finds an average of the students’ growth to be the school’s growth score.
The school quality and student success indicator has four factors – student achievement, reading at grade level, science achievement and growth – for elementary and middle schools and 11 for high schools. The high school factors are extended to include on-time credit, GPA of 2.8 or higher, ACT Composite of 19 or greater, ACT readiness, AP/IB/Concurrent Courses, computer science and community service credits.
For high schools, the graduation rates are based on number of expected graduates compared to the number of actual graduates in four years and in five years.
A school’s grade has no impact on the amount of funding received from the state, Coffman said. Schools that score in the top 10 percent in the growth area received a bonus in funding, but schools that receive low grades do not have their funding changed because of it.
Coffman said that there’s people with the ADE who are available to talk to schools, particularly those who received low scores, to ask questions and get additional feedback about things the school could do to raise their scores for the following year. This department can also reach out to schools the state might be concerned about to offer assistance.
“What schools should be doing and what they are doing, is using this data to develop their school level improvement plans and those are should be posted on their district websites,” Coffman said. “All of the schools got their data so right now they should be studying this and going into their school level improvement plans and adjusting it based on what they learned from this report.”
Michael Shine may be reached at 870-862-6611 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook @MichaelAZShine for updates on Union County school news.