The Mississippi Department of Education issued the following statement.
The Mississippi State Board of Education (SBE) voted today to reset the baseline scores for establishing accountability grades for schools that have a 12th grade. The change would address the lack of comparability to growth scores in prior years and would take effect for the 2017-18 accountability results.
The SBE’s decision followed a recommendation from the Commission on School Accreditation (CSA) and the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to reset the scores.
The scores for assigning school and district letter grades for 2017-18 were set last year based on 2016-17 student performance data. Because the growth for 2016-17 for schools with a 12th grade was not comparable to growth computed in 2017-18, the CSA and TAC recommended the baseline scores for earning each letter grade from A through F be reset.
The differences in growth were caused by the use of three different high school assessments over a three-year period. Last year’s growth calculations for schools with a 12th grade still included data from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), which was administered in 2014-15.
Dr. Chris Domaleski, associate director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment and chair of the MDE’s TAC, said many states have faced the challenge of calculating growth on different assessments.
“Mississippi has now had the same high school assessments for three consecutive years, so future growth calculations will no longer include the residual effects of changing assessments,” Domaleski said.
Mississippi first implemented the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) in 2015-16, which includes tests in English Language Arts and Mathematics for grades 3-8 and high school Algebra I and English II.
The TAC and CSA did not recommend making any changes to baseline scores for elementary and middle schools or for school districts. The elementary and middle school baseline scores were established last year based on only MAAP data.
Accountability letter grades for the 2017-18 school year are scheduled to be released in September.
“The Board made this decision after careful thought and deliberation and with consideration of what is in the best interest of students,” said Dr. Jason Dean, SBE chair. “We believe this adjustment will ensure the accountability model accurately reflects student progress and provides a meaningful comparison of how well students are learning from year to year.”
10 comments:
I never trust agencies and "experts" that change their rules of accountability! If I was a betting person, I would bet the change will make the schools look better!!
Just like the schools that allow retesting when a student fails or grades the whole class on a bell curve. So little Johnny can get a 67 on a test and end up with a B+ because of how poorly the rest of the class has done.
Mississippi schools are more concerned with the appearance of education then actual education of the students.
Here's an idea: grade our schools in relation to the people our children will actually be competing with in other countries. We're getting our asses handed to us by countries like Slovenia. If we're not going to provide high quality public education in this country, we at least ought to be teaching everyone Mandarin so they can understand what their boss is telling them to do.
It's still better than 90% of the Academy Schools, at least there is some sort of standards
These changes are just window dressing. They don't address real problems or accountability in Mississippi K-12 public education. Until public education is radically overhauled, we're just pissing money and effort away with the current system. Einstein had it right about insanity by doing the same damn thing over and over. Want real change (and subsequent success)?
Eliminate all school-funded/supported athletics and make them intramural, after-hours, and completely supported by the students (and their parents) who participate in them. That means little Johnny/Janie probably won't play college ball, but how many of them really achieve life-long success through that?
Rework the school year calendar to eliminate its ridiculous agricultural legacy and provide kids more than 180 days of real education.
Speed up and finish the current snail's pace job of consolidating Mississippi public school districts. Except for a few justified exceptions (such as large cities, of which there are very few in MS), why in the hell do we still have so many school districts in only 82 counties?
There's a lot more that can be done but it requires radical change -- in the districts, schools, and especially parenting...
What I understand is they had to change the way they did the scores because the politicians told schools to do Common Core then a year later said it was a bad idea. You have kids who have taken a whole bunch of different types of tests in recent years with no real way to compare them as is required by the politicians. This is what you get when you keep trying to change things. Let them do they thing!
MDE is a pyramid scheme that keeps billions flowing to the top. Nothing more. There is no real education happening, only indoctrination of entitlement. It's gotten so bad that leaders are double-dipping funding streams by radically increasing dual enrollment numbers to get kids "passed" in high-school who would not otherwise make it through freshman/sophomore years of college. The entire system needs to be overhauled.
11:14, you've got good ideas! Too bad our decision-makers don't. :(
Our education system operates for the adults, not the children.
Please explain and define the term 'Growth' as used in this article/thread.
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