School districts in Indiana will receive an accountability grade as the Indiana State Board of Education approved a new system to evaluate schools earlier this year.

It marks the return of the A-F grade system that was paused five years ago. The new system focuses on student achievement metrics, like earning high school credits, taking dual credit and AP classes, performing well on ILEARN and meeting an attendance goal.

Greg McDaniel, coordinator of school services at Zionsville Community Schools, said the new grading system is meant to consider more factors than only a standardized test.

“This was designed to hold schools accountable for serving every single child, and that’s a wonderful thing,” he said. “We might not agree how they got there, but it’s a great thing and thought process.”

Schools will receive their first grades in the fall, based on this school year. Grades will be assigned to each district’s third grade, 10th and 12th grade, fourth through eighth grade, each school building and an overall district grade.

The first round of grades is for baseline purposes. There will be no consequences to this year’s grades. It is also unclear what consequences will be for low performing schools. It’s one of many details schools are still waiting on. ZCS Superintendent Rebecca Coffman said more guidance is expected from the Indiana Department of Education later this year.

Each student will receive a score based on a combination of metrics deemed academic mastery and additional knowledge. The scores will be used to determine letter grades for schools.

Metrics differ for what group of students are evaluated. For example, for 10th graders, credits earned as a freshman and earlier factor into the letter grade as does credits for specific subject areas like English and math, and taking dual credit, career and technical and AP courses.

“The whole idea behind school accountability was to push kids learning down further to open up opportunities at the top end, specifically work based learning, among other things,” McDaniel said in a presentation to the school board April 13.

College readiness factors, such as SAT performance, is a focus for evaluating a school’s 12th grade.

“We are going to be a school that gets advantaged by this,” McDaniel said. “This is going to help us.”

More than 90% of Zionsville Community High School students go to college.

The new grading system considers a high school student who earns a diploma seal to be at expectations. Above expectations, which would be scored higher, would require a student to earn a plus seal. A plus seal is more demanding, including several, sometimes more than 100, hours of work-based learning.

“That is going to be a challenge for high schools across the state,” McDaniel said. “It just will because there is a lot you have to do to get into that plus category.”

The seals are part of the state’s new graduation requirements that replace the old Core 40 and academic honors diplomas. The new requirements apply to the class of 2029.

The accountability model also weighs a student earning an academic honors diploma (the old diploma model applies to students who will graduate before 2029) as meeting expectations.

“They are setting up a system that says if you get an academic honors diploma you are, at best, a B student,” McDaniel said. “That’s pretty rigorous. That’s something that has made us uncomfortable.”

Accountability grades for fourth through eighth grades will be tied to ILEARN scores, demonstrating growth and soft skills. McDaniel said the state is developing an employability, soft skill test for these grades.

School board vice president Michael Berg said the accountability grade system will be biased toward communities like Zionsville, where parents have the time and means to invest in their children. He argued the system will create an environment that is critical of public education and places unachievable goals on certain districts.

“Just something I think that we need to be paying attention to as we look at the shifting landscape of public education,” he said.

 

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