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By Kyle Hinchey, Stetson Payne and Andrea Eger
For Tulsa Public Schools, only Booker T. Washington High School received an overall A grade, while 22 school sites received an F.
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma State Department of Education on Thursday released school report cards after a years-long effort to overhaul the controversial A-F grading system.
The new grade cards, which were designed to better reflect student achievement and school improvement, came online shortly after State Board of Education members voted to certify them during their monthly meeting. They appear on an interactive dashboard viaoklaschools.com that allows users to analyze and compare data with schools across the state.
For Tulsa Public Schools, only Booker T. Washington High School received an overall A grade, while 22 school sites received an F. Meanwhile, several suburban districts received mostly B’s and C’s, but with no A’s or F’s.
This is the first time Oklahoma has released school report cards since October 2016. State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister led education proponents in condemning the old accountability system for relying too much on student proficiency rates on state-mandated tests while failing to accurately show school performance.
A 95-member task force representing educators, parents and other stakeholders helped remodel the grade cards to feature performance indicators and highlight student progress.
The new report cards include measurements for academic achievement, English language proficiency and chronic absenteeism. There are also measurements detailing academic growth for elementary and middle schools as well as graduation rates and post-secondary opportunities for high schools.
Each indicator is assigned a number of points and given an individual letter grade, with a maximum of 90 available points to produce a school’s overall grade. The online dashboard includes the overall letter grade at the bottom of each school page.
This year’s grades were distributed on a bell curve. The bottom 5 percent of schools received an F and will have access to increased federal funding. Because of the bell curve, five percent of schools also received an A.
The grading system also assigns students target scores based on special subgroups in an effort to help all demographics reach proficiency, as required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Subgroups include students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, black students and Hispanic students.
Unlike in the previous system, Hofmeister said students are now counted only once to ensure each contributes equally to the student achievement indicator.
Hofmeister acknowledged that the new report cards are a tool to satisfy federal requirements and shouldn’t be viewed as a snapshot of school progress.
“It is not a comprehensive evaluation of the important and critical work that is occurring in schools right now,” she said. “But it does give us some information that we hope will be more meaningful than in the past, and we have confidence that it is valid and reliable, which is what it must be.”
‘Be cautious about drawing conclusions’
TPS Superintendent Deborah Gist said the new report cards are an improvement over the previous grading system, but she said schools shouldn’t be solely judged on their state grades.
“It is absolutely a better system than the old system, but there is no perfect system,” Gist said. “So it is valuable and it is important information, and I would just encourage people to use it to understand and better hold us accountable, but also be cautious about drawing conclusions about any of our schools based on their grade.”
The district’s own testing, conducted three times each school year measuring progress in the fall, winter and spring, better demonstrates schools’ performance than the annual state tests which factor in summer break, Gist said. Students lose five to six months of progress during the summer break, and Gist said schools spend much of their year digging out of the hole left behind.
It’s why a school like Anderson Elementary, which Gist said has shown vast improvement based on district evaluations, still received an F despite the new system’s focus on growth.
“I think it’s just the difference between the sensitivity of the tools and the timing,” Gist said. “We have a test that we give multiple times during the year that we can look at multiple times of the year … So on an annual measure, even if the students show growth, it may not pick up as much growth because during that school year they’ve made progress and fallen back behind again.”
Despite extensive efforts to better serve students, Anderson Elementary received the same overall grade it did in 2016. The high-poverty school has focused on closing achievement gaps faced by poor and minority students.
“My teachers just go above and beyond every day, and for us to hang another F on the door, it’s disheartening,” Anderson Principal Tracy Thompson said.
Although she’s frustrated with the results, Thompson said the new emphasis on student growth is a step in the right direction.
But she believes the report cards still focus too much on standardized test scores to grade schools.
“In the same way that not all people learn the same, not all people test the same,” Thompson said. “As this news is coming out, my teachers are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I would rather build a portfolio for every kid to measure their success instead of just assigning a score to every child.’
“That’s not fair to make a score of one test on one day what that child has learned because it’s just not accurate.”
Booker T. Washington High School received the district’s only A grade. Principal Melissa Woolridge said it’s a team effort to achieve the high grade, but that doesn’t mean the school won’t address the few low marks on its scorecard.
The high school received a C for its rating on chronic absenteeism, and Woolridge said the high school is already working to improve its rating through various efforts.
“We’ve already put measures in place to make sure we reach the A level status on that next year,” Woolridge said. “But it’s a good feeling because as a team we’ve put in a lot of hard work and dedication, a lot of extra time and it’s good to see something positive come out of our effort.
“We’ve shifted a couple of people to focus on certain portions of our students who are continually absent. We’re trying to put something in place to make sure that no longer becomes a problem.”
Suburban reaction to new grade cards
Bixby Superintendent Rob Miller said he continues to struggle philosophically “with the methods used to place individual students into priority groups and for computing chronic absenteeism” even though his district fared well by comparison with others.
“The intent was to increase transparency and public accountability related to school performance. This goal has never been fully realized because the definition of school success is narrowly defined as performance on standardized tests. The new Oklahoma school reports continue to emphasize student performance on state testing as it’s primary metric,” Miller said. “These report cards do not point to the real opportunities for growth.”
Owasso Public Schools leaders say their schools earned mostly Bs on the state’s new grading system, which represents a change for the community.
“Our grades are not the same; they’ve gone down,” said Margaret Coates, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. “I’m new this year, but I think in the past, Owasso had more As on the old system. We have to keep that in mind — this report card is a new system and it is a growth-model. It is just a snapshot of our schools. It is not our primary motivator to improve.”
Todd Nelson, senior executive director of research, design and assessment at Union Public Schools, said overall, the state’s new grading system means it is statistically impossible for as many schools to earn A or F grades as on the previous report cards. And Union saw that fact born out in its own results.
“It tends to have most schools fall in the middle with Cs. We have several schools with Bs,” Nelson said. “It’s a new accountability system. It does make a better effort than the previous one to address the complexities of education and mitigate the effects that are variables in students’ lives, but it doesn’t fully accomplish that goal. Even those involved in the development of this understand that.”
Like many school district leaders, Nelson said Union will remain focused on more meaningful outcomes and measures for students and their parents because of the inherent fault of Oklahoma’s school grading system.
“We respect the (state’s) effort and will reflect on this information, but we’re going to focus on our mission of 100 percent graduation,” Nelson said. “We have found if students stay at Union, they succeed over time. We have students who come from all different backgrounds and we love our diversity. We have an average graduation rate of 90 percent over the last five years and we’re pressing forward to 100 (percent). Whether a student needs to learn English, or comes to us a little behind, or is gifted, we want to help them achieve that.”
Karla Dyess, associate superintendent of instructional services at Broken Arrow Public Schools, said the district will treat this year’s grades, mostly Cs, as a starting point and have already begun efforts to address lingering issues.
“We are using the results of this new formula as a baseline to help us measure our progress and continue making strategic decisions regarding areas we can improve,” Dyess said. “Chronic absenteeism is a new portion of the formula, and we have already launched a Be Here BA campaign to educate our parents and community on the importance of consistent student attendance.”
Lisa Muller, associate superintendent for education services at Jenks Public Schools, said the new grade cards are an improvement that provide data with deeper context and detail.
“The work taking place inside of our schools goes far beyond what can be represented by assigning a letter grade,” Muller said in a prepared statement. “The population of English Language Learners and the socioeconomic status of students must be considered when evaluating these grades. At Jenks Public Schools, we are pleased, but certainly not content with the grades of our schools. Our principals, teachers, and staff members will continue to work diligently to identify areas of improvement, and to provide outstanding educational experiences for all students.”
