NC education leaders want to change how schools are graded. Here's what that would look like
State Superintendent Catherine Truitt and other Department of Public Instruction leaders say the state's current school accountability system is broken. They proposed to lawmakers Monday a new way of grading schools.
Posted — UpdatedSchools receive a letter grade every year that’s based on standardized tests scores. People can use those grades to see how well their child’s school is doing or to decide if they want to buy a home in a certain area. Schools can use those grades to determine how well they’re accomplishing their goals or whether they need to make improvements.
How the grades are calculated is set in state law. Years ago, lawmakers decide the grade would be calculated by 80% test scores and 20% test score growth. Federal education law requires every state to come up with its own grading system.
“Currently, there is no meaningful accountability for low-performing schools,” Truitt said. “Currently very little is happening at the state level to support low-performing schools.”
In North Carolina, a school is low-performing if it has either a D or F grade and doesn’t show expected growth in test scores.
Whether the school performance grades change is ultimately up to lawmakers during session, not Truitt.
Truitt said the state doesn’t have enough people working on school improvement — just five people overseeing hundreds of schools — and the state identifies too many schools as “low-performing.” North Carolina has similar or better national test scores than other Southern states that label far fewer schools as low-performing. Most states include more metrics than just test scores in their school performance grades, such as student attendance, graduation rates, school climate and other program offerings.
Each school would have four letter grades instead of just one — one for test scores, one for test score growth, one for post-high school readiness and one for opportunities for students at the school. Readiness would include things like participation in career experience activities for elementary students and career development plans for middle school students. Opportunities would include things like the percentage of students participating in extracurricular activities.
Her proposal comes from a working group of stakeholders in and out of schools, including business leaders. A group of 50 superintendents worked on the final revision Truitt proposed Monday.
But Rep. Tricia Cotham, R-Mecklenburg, a former school principal, cautioned that so many things in schools are interconnected. For example, she said, a school may have lower test scores and decide to double-down on academics. But to do that, she said, the school might have to make other cuts, like to music programs or other activities that, under Truitt’s proposal, would hurt them in the “opportunities” category.
“If your focus is math, reading and science… What do you cut? You cut the opportunity part,” Cotham said. “That’s just the reality in North Carolina.”
Michael Maher, an assistant superintendent at DPI, said the “opportunities” category is intended to encourage schools to keep those programs.
Cotham said, noting the low staffing in school turnaround, that the current accountability system was a “tremendous disservice to families and communities.”
Truitt is pushing for a bill this short session that would pilot the new school performance grades next year in schools that want to participate. Then during the 2025-26 school year, all schools would join. For the next two school years, schools would still use the current system simultaneously.
While changing the school performance grades wouldn’t cost anything, Truitt said the Department of Public Instruction needs more employees to work with the schools that need to improve student performance.
That would allow DPI staff to have better oversight of the schools, to more easily identify what needs to change at each school and to provide help.
As it stands now, she said, “If we had $1 billion from the legislature to support low-performing schools, we wouldn’t know who needs what help.”
Additionally, she said, current state law doesn’t require schools to accept help from the department.
“No one is minding the shop,” Truitt said.
Having only five people to supervise school turnaround is a concern for committee Chairman Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston.
“Sounds like we need to readjust our priorities,” he said.
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