Grades for local school corporations and schools have been released by the Indiana Department of Education, but show little change due to the state’s “hold harmless” provision.
State education officials said canceling the spring statewide testing directly affected the ability of the state to calculate the letter grades for the 2019-2020 school year.
Because of this, the state enacted the hold harmless provision, which means that a school or school corporation cannot receive a lower A-F grade than what each received for the 2017-2018 or 2018-2019 school year.
Schools’ grades were also given a hold harmless provision in 2019, due to disappointing Indiana Learning Evaluation Assessment Readiness Network (ILEARN) exam scores. Test results and participation rates are among the factors involved in scoring schools.
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. and the Flat Rock-Hawcreek School Corp. received the same grades for 2019-2020 as they did the previous year, as did area private schools.
The overall grade for BCSC was B. Four schools in BCSC had “C” grades, the lowest grade given among local schools. Those schools were Clifty Creek, Schmitt, Taylorsville elementary schools and Central Middle School. The remainder were rated either “A” or “B.”
Superintendent Jim Roberts said that the school corporation has had to rely more on internal assessments and measurements than on the state grades, when it comes to tracking growth.
“The data is so old, it’s a challenge for us right now to take the testing very seriously, or at least the accountability grade part of it seriously,” he said. “And I say that carefully, but we’re getting the results so many months after the tests are taken. And with the changes in Indiana over the last four to five years in the assessment, from going to ISTEP+ to ILEARN to not testing at all this year, it’s just becoming harder and harder for us to make comparisons using that data to determine how well we’re doing.”
ILEARN measures student achievement and growth through Indiana Academic Standards. It was first administered in the spring of 2019 to students in grades 3-8 as a replacement for Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus.
Roberts said that while he understands the state’s desire for accountability, Indiana needs to find the right standardized test — one that educators find to be “valid and reliable,” does not take a long amount of time to administer and that has standards students have been taught prior to testing.
“I think the ILEARN is heading in that direction,” he said, “But … we don’t have very much experience with it.”
BCSC elementary students have started taking an assessment from the Northwest Evaluation Association, Roberts said.
“That’s an assessment that’s used by schools across the United States,” he said. “… We’re able to give it multiple times throughout the year and then measure our students against their beginning of the year performance to middle of the year performance to end of the year performance.”
Roberts said that he believes that kind of assessment to be more “meaningful” and that Indiana should work to develop that same test or a similar one.
“I’m proud of the work that our educators continue to do,” he added. “… It really is a moving target they’ve had to adjust to over time. … But I offer praise to the teachers and administrators we have in our buildings, doing the best we can with some challenging circumstances, with trying to work through and deal with those assessments.”
The overall grade for the Flat Rock-Hawcreek School Corp. was “B.” Both Hope Elementary and Hauser Jr./Sr. High School received a B grade as well.
Superintendent Shawn Price said that the grades should be taken with a grain of salt, given the circumstances of both the hold harmless provision and COVID-19. He said that the grades don’t provide an accurate reflection of the last year and are “less consequential than any other year” because of the factors involved.
“I don’t think that our school letter grades and all of the data that goes into calculating those are ever a clear representation of what we actually do in the building — the teaching, the learning that goes on,” he said.
Given the upheaval with testing in recent years, both due to COVID-19 and the switch from ISTEP+ to ILEARN exams, he’s hoping that the statewide school grading process becomes “more consistent.”
“We need to find an accountability assessment that works and is something that we can stick with,” he said. “… We’re hoping for consistency and fairness in accountability.”
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2019-2020 hold harmless grades for corporations:
- 50 school corps (17.4%) received an A grade
- 163 school corps (56.6%) received a B grade
- 67 school corps (23.3%) received a C grade
- Four school corps received a D grade
- Two school corps received an F grade
- One school corp received no grade
- One school corp has a grade appeal pending
2019-2020 hold harmless grades for K-12 schools:
- 680 schools (31.7%) received an A grade
- 723 schools (33.7%) received a B grade
- 421 schools (19.6%) received a C grade
- 171 schools (8.0%) received a D grade
- 63 schools (2.9%) received an F grade
- 84 schools (4.0%) received no grade
- Three schools have a grade appeal pending
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According to a memorandum from IDOE, elementary and middle schools’ scores were based off 2018-2019 ILEARN proficiency and participation rates, as well as 2018-2019 growth scores based on ILEARN results.
High schools’ scores were based off of:
- 2018-2019 ISTEP+ 10 proficiency and participation rates
- 2018-2019 growth scores based on ISTEP+ 10 results
- The 2019 cohort for four-year graduation rate and college/career readiness rate
- The 2018 cohort for five-year improvement score
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A summary of the state’s school grades and reports on the data are available at www.doe.in.gov/accountability/find-school-and-corporation-data-reports.
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