Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
A change in the way school accountability grades are calculated is coming – again.
School accountability grades are released every year by the Indiana Department of Education.
Due to changes in federal law and Indiana’s standardized test, the state has changed the criteria for the grades to go in effect during this school year.
Shelly Wilfong, chief analytics office for Warsaw?Community Schools, presented the new way the accountably will be assessed during the school board meeting Monday.
In the past for elementary and middle schools, the grades were solely determined by the ISTEP test, Wilfong said.
Along with the new test, Indiana is changing the scoring requirements in order to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, a federal law passed in 2015.
The Indiana General assembly did away with ISTEP and plans to replace it with the ILEARN test. While the new test will factor in to the new grading system for kindergarten to eighth grade, the system also will look at English learning growth and chronic absenteeism.
Proficiency on the test will count for 42.5 percent of the score, growth on the test will account for 42.5 percent.
Schools will be expected to have 80 percent of students meet one or two thresholds.
The first threshold is 96 percent attendance, regardless of whether the absence was excused or unexcused.
The second threshold is improving attendance, which will be defined as students improving their attendance by at least 3 percent over the previous year.
The state has set a goal of 80 percent of students hitting one of the two targets.
No elementary or middle school in WCS is at either threshold. Eisenhower Elementary is closest at 78 percent.
Another effect the change in federal law is having on school grades is a change to the graduation rate.
Indiana offers two diplomas, a general high school diploma and a diploma known as a Core 40. The Core 40 requires more advanced classes and is required for most colleges.
Under the new law, schools in Indiana will not be able to count the general diploma toward their graduation rate. A student will be able to earn a diploma but it will not count toward WCS’s statistics.
Wilfong estimates this will drop WCS’s graduation rate from 92.6 to 87.5 percent.
The high school accountably grades will be 30 percent graduation rate, 30 percent college and career readiness rate, 15 percent ILEARN proficiency, 15 percent ILEARN growth and 10 percent English language growth.
