Test scores could get more important as state board looks to reverse course on A-F grades

Test scores are about to get more important for Indiana schools — again.

Just one year after implementing a new school grading system that gave equal weight to student improvement and performance on standardized tests, members the Indiana State Board of Education said Thursday they want student proficiency to be given more weight than student growth.

“I think we reached some consensus on some core values,” said board member David Freitas. “Proficiency is more important than growth.”

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The board was reevaluating its A-F grading system as part of the state’s effort to write a plan for how it will comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, a new federal education policy.

ESSA, as the new federal law is known, requires states to submit plans for how they will measure school performance, implement plans to improve struggling schools and more. A major piece of the plan is how schools will be graded.

For the first time, Indiana will include school quality measures that go beyond academic performance and measure things such as attendance and climate. ESSA also requires schools to start including a measure of how English learners are doing.

Elementary and middle school grades will be based on four factors: achievement, growth, English learners and attendance.

High schools will be measured on achievement, growth, English learners, graduation rate and college and career readiness.

The debate Thursday was about how much weight to give each of those measures in the calculation of a school’s final grade.

A study group recommended a model for elementary and middle schools that gave growth — how much progress students make in a given year — more weight than their ability to pass standardized tests. That proposal would give growth the most weight in determining school letter grades.

The education community has been moving toward this model, as proponents say it rewards schools who are doing a good job educating their students, even if they entered school behind.

The group’s proposal for high school letter grades weighted achievement and growth equally, giving more weight to graduation rates and college and career readiness indicators.

Board members Thursday, though, said they think it's more important to know how students are doing on the ultimate goal: performing on grade level.

“Growth, to me, is much less important than proficiency,” said B.J. Watts, a sixth-grade social studies and science teacher in Evansville.

Board members Tony Walker, Byron Ernest and Kathleen Mote said they, too, would like to see more emphasis on achievement. Walker said that if schools receive an A letter grade, the public should be confident they are already high-achieving. 

"Right now, you can be on the road to high-performing and get an A," he said. 

In drafting the state's ESSA plan, staff with the Indiana Department of Education held forums throughout the state to collect public feedback. Cynthia Roach, director of accountability and assessment for the board, said the public was in favor of rewarding growth.

"There was tons of public comment to support making it equal," she said. 

State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick said the public, especially teachers, understand that most schools look better under models that weigh growth more heavily. She suggested keeping the measures weighted equally, as they are now.

The move toward a model where growth and proficiency receive equal weight was seen as a substantial shift in the state's policy, which previously based grades solely on whether students passed standardized tests. The state started looking at the change in 2013 after it was reviewed by a study panel. The plan was finalized in 2016, and the first grades based on it were released last year. 

Even so, the entire concept of A-F grading for schools remains controversial. The grades are high stakes for schools, where consecutive years of poor grades can result in state intervention. 

Of the 17 education agencies — from 16 states and the District of Columbia — that have already submitted ESSA plans to the U.S. Department of Education, four give more weight to growth. Another seven give more weight to proficiency at the elementary and middle school levels and equal or less weight in high school models. Five give more weight to proficiency. 

"State leaders have taken different approaches to how they balance the weighting of proficiency and growth for their mathematics and reading/language arts assessments in their ESSA plans," said Kirsten Carr, director of accountability for the Council of Chief State School Officers. CCSSO has been working with states throughout the ESSA process and has reviewed plans that have been submitted so far. "As states consider how to balance the academic achievement indicator with the academic progress indicator, we have seen a good number of states considering growth more than proficiency."

The board likely will revisit the weighting issue at its August meeting when staff will present more information about how the increased emphasis on proficiency could impact schools. 

Indiana will collect feedback on its draft plan through July 20. 

Call IndyStar reporter Arika Herron at (317) 444-6077. Follow her on Twitter: @ArikaHerron.