By Bill Petzold
Editor
CARO — Students are accustomed to receiving report cards every marking period, but now it’s Michigan schools that are being graded.
Caro Community Schools superintendent Bruce Nelson and director of special services Bill Pouliot sat down with the Advertiser last week to explain the Michigan Schools Accountability Scorecards available to parents and the public online at www.mischooldata.org.
“I’m not sure people are looking at this stuff, but it’s out there,” Nelson said. “Fundamentally, the state is looking at two different types of things with accountabliity status, and they’re not connected; they’re two distinct reports. One of those is the scorecard status.”
The accountability scorecard is maintained by the Michigan Department of Education. The MDE assigns schools an overall rating on a five-color scale with green being the best possible rating in which a school attains 85 percent or greater of possible points in a category. Next best rating is “lime” (schools attaining between 70 and 85 percent of possible points), followed by yellow (60 to 70 percent), orange (50 to 60 percent) and red is the worst ranking (attaining less than 50 percent of possible points).
Each school then is graded in various areas of performance in several categories using a green-yellow-red color scale for each report “cell” and subdivided by student groups based on ethinicity, economic factors and ability level. A green cell signifies that the school met the target criteria, yellow cells show that students’ performance is satisfactory or that improvement goals have been met, and red cells indicate a deficiency. Green, yellow and red cells are worth two, one and zero points, respectively.
For example, the 2012-13 accountability scorecard for Caro High School shows an overall school status of “yellow” with the school earning 40 of 50 possible points. Green cells appear in the “All Students” student group with two points awarded each for mathematics, reading, social studies, science and writing, as well as completion rate (graduation rate). Thus, Caro High received 10 of 10 possible points for the “All Students” in the student group.
However on the next line, the “Bottom 30 percent” of students were rated with red cells across the category.
“One red cell (ensures) you will not get green,” Nelson explained. “The result is overall around the state … 85 percent of school districts are in the ‘yellow.’
“This is a breakdown of Caro, and where we got some reds — which generated the ‘yellow’ status — is the bottom 30 percent, and that’s where most school districts have a stumble. What (the scorecard) measures is the movement of that bottom 30 percent toward the proficiency goal, and asks ‘are they on trajectory to be at that successful level?’ … The other problem that schools get dinged on is … the gap between the high and the low. Students with disabilities and the bottom 30 percent are the two areas that almost every single school district is a yellow because of.”
Nelson explained that the Tuscola ISD’s overall scorecard includes low scores from schools like Highland Pines School and the Caro Education Center, where the goal is not to turn out 4.0 ranked students, but rather to equip students with “life skills” and help them find employment.
“We’re not running the Caro Education Center to compete in this horse race, so we have to enter the horse in this horse race but the focus of the Caro Education Center is to take kids who would be dropouts, who would not be making it, and move them in the direction of getting a diploma,” Nelson said. “Some of (those students) are on a GED track program, so we’re saying ‘We’re not trying to graduate you from Caro High School, we’re trying to get you a GED.’ That still counts for us as a dropout, but our goal is to get them to have a marketable level of education so they can go to an employer and say, ‘Yes, I have a high school diploma. I’ve got a GED.’”
But while all of Tuscola County’s nine school districts received yellow ratings (aside from the ISD which received an orange overall), Pouliot and Nelson pointed out that the Frankenmuth School District — which ranks well in academic performance — received a red overall rating on its accountability scorecard.
“In all the (Frankenmuth) schools they end up in the yellow category, and then the top and bottom — that gap (between most and least proficient students) — gets them into the red,” Nelson said. “So that’s why when you look at the overall picture you say, ‘How reliable is this (information)?’ ”
“Yet their MEAP scores are the highest in Saginaw County,” Pouliot added.
“So if the rating system were A, B, C, D and F, then Frankenmuth would get an ‘F’,” Nelson said. “Huh?
“(The accountability scorecard) does what the state wants to do, which is to compare all school districts across the state on the same types of articles, but it really doesn’t give a clear picture of what the performance levels really are. That’s why the state has a second list which is the top-to-bottom list which is based on performance.”
While Frankenmuth High School is given a failing grade by the accountability scorecard, the school ranked fourth in 2012-13 among schools in the Saginaw ISD with a ranking in the 90th percentile, meaning that Frankenmuth students perform as well or better than 90 percent of students in the state.
Among Tuscola County schools, the top five listed on the top to bottom ranking include Unionville-Sebewaing High School (94th percentile), Cass City Elementary (91st), Kingston High School (86), Mayville High School (71) and Unionville-Sebewaing Elementary (71). All five are listed as reward schools. The sixth-ranked school, Reese High School (67th percentile), is listed as a “focus” school.”
“If they’re a reward school they get additional funding for the number of students in that building,” Nelson said. “So you have reward schools, then you have a mythical group that doesn’t have any name — let’s call it the ‘blank’ schools — and then you have priority schools and you have focus schools. Focus schools are in the bottom five percent with gaps between the highest and the lowest, so it’s possible for a school district to have one building in the reward category and another being in the focus. One is in the very highest at the top, and one is at the very bottom, and it’s based on those groups.”
Nelson said that while the rankings are somewhat misleading, educators still may glean some useful information from www.mischooldata.org.
“The concern that we have, we’re looking at the statewide percentile ranking, and we’re saying, ‘You know what htis tells us? We still have (work to do) for our school system so our scores our better,’ ” Nelson said. “That’s our goal: we want to see our kids perfoming better on statewide tests, and we want to move from 13-18-12 percent, to 15-18-25 percent. We don’t expect to be at 94 percent in a year, but the goal is that we want to begin to change that environment and make those moves.”