WCS Examines Accountability Grades
During the monthly Warsaw Community School Corporation board work session held last night, Chief Accountability Officer Dani Barkey and Chief Academic Officer David Robertson discussed the 2013-2014 A-F accountability grades in detail.
Last week, the Indiana Department of Education released accountability grades for all individual schools and corporations within Indiana. Though WCS reported straight A grades in 2012 and A’s and B’s the following year, this year the results of the state assessment was a little more varied.
WCS reported a total of six schools receiving A grades. Schools to receive A grades include: Claypool Elementary, Eisenhower Elementary, Harrison Elementary, Washington Elementary, Lincoln Elementary and Jefferson Elementary (see related).
Though the school corporation did see an improvement at Harrison (moving from a B grade to an A grade) the corporation also saw some setbacks. Leesburg Elementary and Warsaw Community High School both declined slightly from an A-graded school to a B-graded school. Both middle schools also saw a decline with Edgewood Middle School moving from a B grade to a C grade (a 2.75 score) and Lakeview Middle School dropping from a B grade to a D grade (a 1.5 score).
According to Barkey, there are two models that configure grades: an elementary/middle school grade model and a high school model. In elementary and middle school, students are assessed on their English language arts and math scores on ISTEP. They are also able to achieve bonus points for growth as well as penalty points for low growth. Bonus points are given for growth in both the top and bottom 25 percent of students. These growth rate points can both bolster and lower a school tremendously.
Barkey and Robertson both discussed strategies to improve grades at schools that showed a decline over the past year. Robertson noted that Leesburg Elementary will be implementing a stronger focus on writing in the upper grades as well as a new English learning (EL) development program that will pilot at Leesburg this year. Robertson noted that Leesburg has a high percentage of EL students.
At the middle schools, both schools were given reduction points for low growth.
“Obviously this is another area we feel most urgent about address,” explained Robertson. “While we had a lot of areas for celebration — we had an incredibly high ECA pass rate and there are a lot of great things going on — however we also see there are opportunities for growth. We are really kind of looking at a planned three prong approach.”
Robertson noted that principals at both middle schools will continue to work with a RISE evaluation model to provide support and feedback on instruction as well as ensuring students are getting maximum instruction time.
“We are really trying to protect instructional time. Middle school students traditionally have a lot of opportunity to experience different things and those things are good and we want them to relate directly to what they are learning in class, but we also know students have to be in the classroom to be learning. So were working to protect instructional time.”
Lastly, Robertson noted that the school corporation will be implementing a success time that will reach out to students at various learning levels to ensure that students who need assistance and high achieving students are both growing together. Students will be assessed according to the corporations power standards and will be broken into success groups to maximize achievement.
According to WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert, the state will be switching to a new accountability model in the coming year to determine school’s grades.