School Performance Grades
& School Report Cards
Vanessa Jeter, Communication Director
Key Points
• First year for performance grades, A-F
• Calculated on a 15-point scale
• One measure of school quality
• Presented among other data
• Letter grades replace school
designations from ABCs model
• Feb. 5, 2015 2013-14 School
Report Cards
launch and
include A-F
School
Performance
Grades for the
first time.
Communication
Strategies
• Customized welcome letter from
principals on School Report Cards
• Highlighting special programs,
courses, learning opportunities and
extracurricular programs
• Context of how similar schools
performed
• Details of measures included in the
letter grade
• Letter grades
provide a quick
measure, but not
a complete
reflection of
school quality.
Timeline –
School Report Card Activities
Dec. 8-19 Welcome Letter submission window
Jan. 12 – SRC Data Preview Opens w/o School
Performance Grades
Jan. 15 – School Performance Grades available to LEA
testing coordinators. READY Accountability background
briefing document available.
Jan. 29 – Webinar, 10 a.m. for LEA communication staff,
accountability staff and news media
Jan. 23 – Data preview closes
Timeline –
School Report Card Activities
Jan. 26 – Correction window begins
Feb. 2 – News release draft provided to LEAs
Feb. 5 – School Report Cards and School Performance
Grades presented at State Board of Education Meeting
(before noon). SRC site is live once Board presentation
begins.
Feb. 5 – News media briefing immediately following State
Board of Education meeting.
News Coverage – School Grades
News Coverage – School Grades
News Coverage – School Grades
•
Berger Statement On Public School Grades (N.C. Political News) — Senate
Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) issued the following response Thursday
regarding the release of 2013-2014 school performance grades for North
Carolina Public Schools: “Public school grades will increase transparency,
encourage support and reform for struggling schools and allow us to explore
what our top performers are doing right so we can replicate their best practices
elsewhere. We’re troubled by early knee-jerk reactions that appear to condemn
poor children to automatic failure. And we reject the premise that high poverty
schools are incapable of excelling, since today’s report shows numerous
examples that are proving that myth wrong. We must give these grades a
chance to work so we can learn from them and improve outcomes for our
children.”
News Coverage – School Grades
•
Governor McCrory Issues Statement On School Performance Report (Governor’s Press
Office) Governor McCrory issued the following statement after the release of the State
Board of Education’s 2013-2014 School Performance Grades for traditional public and
charter schools.“Today, our state took a positive first step to provide North Carolina’s
parents, communities and policymakers with a clear measure of what matters most: our
students’ academic achievement,
•
Why one A-F grade for a school makes about as much sense as one A-F grade for your
child (NC Policy Watch) Yesterday, North Carolina took the latest in an series of steps
cooked up by conservative advocates and ideologues to demoralize and depopulate our
public education system (what they call “government schools”) — the release of
the much ballyhooed A-F grades for individual schools. As we’ve quickly learned —
surprise!! — schools with lots of poor kids tend to fare poorly on standardized tests. Who
could have guessed?
News Coverage – School Grades
•
The biggest failure of the A-F grades (Charlotte Observer editorial) - If you believe, as we
do, that standardized tests are a valuable tool for measuring how our students and
teachers are performing, you should be cringing at Thursday’s release of A-F letter
grades for North Carolina’s public schools.
•
EDITORIAL: State’s new performance grade system gets an “I” — for incomplete
(Sanford Herald) --A perfunctory look at the N.C. Department of Public Instruction's
school performance grades, released Thursday, is disturbing, especially with almost 30
percent of the state's public schools receiving a grade of either “D” or “F.” In Lee County,
there were no “F” grades, but five of 13 graded schools received a mark of “D.”In
assessing the grades, though, you have to assess the grading system. As that's been
done in recent weeks and months, in anticipation of the release of the grades, it's
important to note that many people with knowledge of the state's new method of
measuring our schools would respond with a grade of “I” — as in “incomplete” — for the
grading method itself.
School Report Card – Landing Page
School Report Card – School Grade
School Report Card – Read to Achieve
School Report Card – Read to Achieve
School Report Card – Read to Achieve