On Friday, the State Board of Education announced that at its August 28th meeting, the Board will consider an “extended timeline in awarding letter grades under the A-F Accountability System to allow for minor refinements in calculations.” The delay brings into sharp focus the fallacy forwarded by Governor Doug Ducey and his team that the accountability system serves parents, teachers and taxpayers.
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“The Accountability Advisory Group will discuss proposed refinements on student growth and graduation rate calculations to ensure that letter grades appropriately differentiate performance across schools. In addition, it will be recommended that sufficient time be allotted to the Arizona Department of Education to review and validate the refined calculations,” reads the State Board of Education’s (SBE) announcement.
The SBE proposed timeline is as follows:
August 28 – State Board of Education meets to discuss and review proposed refinements to student growth and graduation calculations.
August 29 – September 18 – ADE to validate refinements
September 25 – State Board of Education meets to set cut scores
Week of September 25 – Letter grades are issued to schools subject to embargo, including media
October 9 – Embargo lifted for schools and media; letter grades publicly released to all, including media
This year, Ducey vetoed Sen. Steve Smith’s bill, S.B. 1209, which passed through both chambers with one lone “no” vote cast by Sen. Debbie Lesko. Smith’s bill attempted to bring balance and meaning to the State’s accountability system. Smith’s bill directed the SBE “to adopt a model framework for teacher and principal evaluation instrument that includes quantitative data on student academic progress that accounts for between 33 and 50 percent of the evaluation outcomes.” In other words, the bill would have reduced the value assigned to the AZMerit test.
Ducey and his team have determined that the high stakes test is a true measure of a teacher’s performance. The resulting grade assigned to individual schools would then work to inform parents as to the quality of any particular school. The most obvious problem with this thinking is the delay by the SBE. If in fact grades are key to a parent’s decision making, and the State is all about “choice” then our leaders have failed to provide that information in a timely manner, and parents did not truly have an informed choice.
Because the AZMerit is an untested testing instrument, and many of our schools do not have the proper testing equipment, the notion of it having any value in our current system is disturbing. The SBE should reassess the test and system completely rather than taking half-measures to delay what we already know; our kids and teachers are struggling.