The Indiana Department of Education will include student growth as part of its annual grades for elementary schools for the first time this fall, but educational leaders remain split on the model’s fairness.
As part of a revamped grading rubric for all Indiana schools approved this spring, elementary schools are moving from a standard dependent on unfiltered ISTEP+ scores to one based partially on comparing schools to one another.
Superintendent Steve Edwards said the change is unfair for urban districts like Marion Community Schools.
“The elementary through junior high model has inherent problems, and I preferred the old one,” he said. “I’d rather they do it on growth within the district or growth within the school rather than growth based on a state average.”
According to the new rubric for elementary grades, schools will receive preliminary scores based strictly on the percentage of their students that pass standardized tests, including the ISTEP+. For the first time this year, those scores will be raised or lowered based on the amount of students at a school in a particular statewide performance group that show high or low growth from year to year.
“If we were to compare a child’s growth against himself, I’m OK with that. But what we’re doing is, a third of the students in the state of Indiana are guaranteed to fail based on the model they’ve provided. Even if you grow, and you don’t grow in the top two thirds, you’re considered failing. Does that make sense?” said Madison-Grant Superintendent John Trout. “It’s an average in certain bands across the state, and if you’re not in the top two thirds of the band (in growth), you wouldn’t receive credit for the growth of that student. In fact, it would count against you.”
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said the Indiana Department of Education is continuing to tweak the growth model to make it as fair as possible.
“The growth model in Indiana does not relegate a third of the children to be failures. In its purest form … that was true. It is normative. But what we did was make some statistical changes to the model that set targets of anticipated growth,” he said. “The other issue is, there are only two growth models in the state that are statistically valid. So I get a real kick out when people come to me and say, ‘We’re just going to get a new growth model.’ I want to know where they’re going to get it.
“We are working. It’s an ongoing process to tweak that model to better serve Indiana.”
Trout said he’d prefer that the accountability system stay constant regardless of its fairness.
“I would prefer the target not keep moving. Pick a plan, let me know what the plan is and we’ll hit it,” he said.
Edwards said the extra administrative work necessary to calculate the growth model has been a factor in the delay of school accountability grades from August to October.
Schools received their first grades under the new model last week. Those will be released to the public in October.