With Senate Bill 1286, the Arizona State Legislature established a new accountability system for Arizona public schools. Modeled after "parts" of well-funded school initiatives in Florida and Colorado, it will maintain the current school labels (Excelling, Highly Performing, Performing Plus, Under Performing, Failing) and add school grades (A, B, C, D, and F). Using current Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) data, both the labels and new grades will be generated from this single, student assessment score.
The confusion in the new system comes with how AIMS data is used by each of these school accountability measures. The labels measure the percentage of students meeting or exceeding the grade level state standards in addition to graduation, dropout rates and other value related data. The new school grades will place a major emphasis on weighted measures including student growth with the lowest performing students weighted twice. An "expected growth" calculation will also occur as well as a "cut-off" point system that will make about 30% of all schools in Arizona "D" schools compared to 10% for the labels "underperforming" schools. These school grades have twice been delayed due to the outcry from the obvious disconnect between the two systems. "Excelling" schools in the labels format are being seen as "C" schools in the grade format as the grade system utilizes fewer, meaningful school success measures into account.
It is unfortunate the Arizona Department of Education continues to take a single snapshot of data in time and not fully design an accountability system with many data points of student achievement. School labels and school grades are just one piece of the education system that should recognize that "learning is a constant, but time is the variable." Many indicators of school success exist that would meet the accountability need as well as truly and fairly assessing our students' social, emotional and learning levels.
A more proactive and well thought out variety of researched success measures would better serve our shared goal of school improvement rather than a simplistic letter grade created at a single point in time during each school year. All of us should be concerned about systemic school improvement not creating shortsighted, internal system obstacles.
