State’s Grading Curve Helped Schools Score A

By Jamie Malernee And Douane D. James, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Jun. 17–First came the euphoria: News that a record-breaking number of Broward schools — 157 campuses — earned an A this year, according to the state’s grading system.

One campus shot from an F to an A, and three zoomed from a D to an A.

But on closer examination, people started asking questions. Half of the students at some of those A schools are unable to read or do math well, test scores show. So how are those high grades possible?

“This just can’t be. I don’t buy it,” said parent Elizabeth Kates of Pompano Beach, who thinks local schools put too much emphasis on testing. The answer, or at least part of it, boils down to how the state hands out grades: Some Broward schools’ grades skyrocketed this year not because every student magically began acing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but because since 2002, the state has also given high marks to schools that showed their students making dramatic improvement on the test. This now means a school where half the students can’t read well — like Smart School Charter Middle in Lauderhill — earned the same A as a school like Embassy Creek Elementary in Cooper City, where students sailed through the FCAT.

How grading works

Most people assume the state gives grades the same way an average teacher would. Get nine out of 10 questions right, and you get an A. Eight out of 10, a B, and so on.

Wrong.

Half of the points a school can earn toward a letter grade are based solely on student learning gains. Essentially, the state is like a teacher that gives extra credit for working hard and making big progress. And this year, a lot of Broward schools improved.

If the state only gave points for meeting high standards, not improvement, an analysis shows that 25 schools — about one out of 10 campuses in Broward — would score 90 percent or above, or what in most classrooms is an A. (Under the current system, two out of three schools is an A.) Under a standards-only system, 32 schools — slightly more than one out of 10 Broward schools — would also be considered failing. (Giving credit for improvements, no schools in Broward are Fs this year.)

Because the state’s system gives high marks for both factors, two schools with very different test scores can both be considered an A. For example, students at Eagle Point Elementary in Weston received an A this year, with 96 percent of them doing well on the reading portion of the FCAT and 97 percent doing well on math. In comparison, only about 53 percent of the students at Parkway Middle in Fort Lauderdale read on grade level, and only 59 percent solved math problems well.

The state gave Parkway Middle an A partly because these low scores were still nearly twice as high as they were the year before. The year before, Parkway was a C.

David Hall, principal of Parkway, said it is crucial for students and teachers to get recognition for making improvements. Many of his students come from poor, single-parent families and arrive on the first day of school far behind their peers from other neighborhoods. Parkway gives the lowest students special instruction during the week and also requires them to attend Saturday school.

This year, three out of four of his most struggling students improved significantly on the reading portion of the FCAT.

“It gives the kids something to hold onto. It says, ‘Look what I’ve done here,’ and that gives them incentive to keep moving,” Hall explained. Once an A is earned, Hall noted, schools are faced with the difficult job of keeping it. Next year, science scores will be a factor in school grades, and campuses will have to show their lowest students are improving in math the same way the lowest students are now required to do in reading.

“I don’t fool myself that this is going to be easy to maintain,” Hall said. “The bar has been raised.”

Donna Greene, whose sons attend Olsen Middle in Dania Beach and South Broward High in Hollywood, thinks grades show a limited view of a school’s worth. She prefers to check out her son’s teachers and classes firsthand. Still, even she was pleased that Olsen Middle improved from a C to an A this year.

“As much as you want to say it doesn’t matter, it’s still going to have that bit of extra prestige,” Greene said. Playing Politics?

Gov. Jeb Bush, who has made the grading system a key reform of his administration, has pointed to the increasing number of A schools statewide — from 202 in 1999 to 1,466 this year — as proof his administration has made important and lasting education improvements.

“It’s because of the reforms put in place that it’s possible to achieve these goals,” said Cathy Schroeder, spokeswoman for the Department of Education, though she added that new requirements for math and science next year will “very likely” mean the number of A schools will drop.

When questioned earlier in the week about the accuracy of the school grades this year, Bush stood behind them.

“This is an outcome driven process and we’re getting terrific outcomes,” he said.

Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, counters that the jump in A-schools statewide misleads.

“It gives the false perception that we’re investing what we should in education,” said Wilson, referring to how Florida ranks in the bottom tier of states in per-pupil spending.

But the system isn’t always skewed to the positive. It also works in the opposite way, penalizing schools if they don’t help students do better than the year before, even if the students do OK overall.

For instance, students at Sunland Park Elementary in Fort Lauderdale earned enough points to get a C this year, except that less than half of the school’s lowest performing students made gains on reading. So the state lowered the school’s grade to a D.

Schools learn from such hard lessons.

In 2005, Broward had 46 schools that did not help enough of their lowest students improve in reading, according to state figures. As a result, several dropped a letter grade. This year, few of those schools made the same mistake. This year, only 13 failed to improve their lowest students.

Jamie Malernee can be reached at jmalernee@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4849.

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Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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