INDIANAPOLIS | Schools are known for giving out grades, but it appears Indiana schools will soon be getting graded themselves.
The State Board of Education on Wednesday approved a plan to substitute the familiar A-to-F letter grade system for the descriptive terms currently used to denote a school's student achievement.
If, as expected, Gov. Mitch Daniels also agrees to the change, beginning in 2011 every school in Indiana will get a grade based on student performance and improvement on the ISTEP-Plus standardized test.
State Superintendent Tony Bennett said the change to letter grades will enable parents and taxpayers to more easily measure school performance, rather than having to rely on the terms used now, including "exemplary progress," "commendable progress" and "academic progress." Those three categories would become "A," "B" and "C."
"We have to be clear about how schools perform," Bennett said. "That clarity is imperative."
However, that clarity is not popular.
More than 200 principals, teachers and parents told the board last week they believe it's unfair to assign a grade to an entire school based on student achievement on one test. The board also received more than 300 comments in opposition via e-mail.
But Board Member Daniel Elsener of Indianapolis dismissed those concerns as "silly talk."
"The substance of the thing demands truth-telling with clarity," Elsener said. "I think communities have been asleep."
Using student performance from 2008, the most recent year for which category placement data is available, approximately 47 percent of Indiana schools would be graded "D" or "F."
Bennett said schools are actually performing at a higher level than those grades suggest. The existing "academic watch" and "academic probation" categories include a federal "adequate yearly progress" standard that Bennett said is sometimes misrepresentative when applied to the performance of small subgroups of students.
To correct that, the board voted to remove AYP as a component of school grades, and Bennett is asking educators and others to work with his department to revise the rubric to be used for grading schools.