School Performance Grades Issue Brief
Background
School performance letter grading systems are the most recent policy trend to emerge out of the public
school standards and accountability movement. These systems measure the performance of individual
schools and school districts through the same A-F letter grading scales that are used for student report
cards, with various test data ranges translating to certain letter grades. The state of Florida pioneered this
policy as part of its 1999 public education reform package. A total of 10 states, including North
Carolina, have established public school letter grade accountability systems, with 8 of these having been
implemented between 2010 and 2012.1
North Carolina’s original public school accountability system, the ABCs, measured school performance
through 7 categories of recognition. The ABCs used measurements of how a student’s learning had
grown over time (growth) along with federally required AYP measurements to designate schools as
Honor Schools of Excellence, Schools of Excellence, Schools of Distinction, Schools of Progress, No
Distinction, Priority Schools, or Low-Performing Schools. The North Carolina State Board of Education
replaced the ABCs accountability system with the READY accountability system beginning with the
2012-13 school year, and in the process eliminated these recognition categories. Legislators wanted to
ensure that North Carolina’s accountability system retain some type of overall school performance
measurement and viewed the Florida A-F letter grading system as a successful model that provided
transparency in evaluating school performance and attracted more attention to education. 2 As part of the
Excellent Public Schools Act, legislators required that A-F letter grades be included as a component of
end of year report cards for each school and district beginning with the 2012-13 school year.3
North Carolina’s A-F letter grading system assigns elementary and middle schools 1 point for each
percent of their students who achieve proficiency (scoring at Level III or IV) on EOG math, reading, and
science assessments. High schools receive 1 point for each percent of their students who achieve
proficiency on required EOC Algebra I, English II, and Biology assessments, as well as 1 point for each
percent of their students who successfully pass a higher level mathematics class, score at or above a
level demonstrating college readiness on a nationally normed test of college readiness (ACT), graduate
within four years of entering high school, and demonstrate workplace readiness on a nationally normed
test of workplace readiness (WorkKeys).
A method established by the State Board of Education will convert each school’s point total into a
corresponding score on a 0-100 point scale; various ranges on the point scale continuum then translate to
a letter grade as follows:
1
Foundation for Excellence in Education. http://excelined.org.
“Florida Formula for Student Achievement: Lessons for the Nation.” Foundation for Excellence in Education. Presentation
given by Patricia Levesque to the NCGA House Education Committee, February 8, 2012.
3
S.L. 2012-142, sec. 7A.3.
2
90-100 = A
80-89 = B
70-79 = C
60-69 = D
0-59 = F
Student growth levels are notably absent from the criteria to be considered in assigning these new letter
grades to a school and school district.
NCSBA Position
Local boards of education have serious concerns about a system of school performance grades that omit
any recognition of student growth.
Most education scholars recognize that student learning levels at a school are most appropriately gauged
through both the portion of the school’s students attaining proficiency (scoring at or above grade level)
and the levels of learning growth students are experiencing. Evaluating student learning through these
dual factors accounts for the fact that end of year composite scores are narrow snapshots in time; they
fail to capture how much students are actually learning from year to year. For example, two schools
could have identical portions of students scoring below proficiency on end of grade tests, but a large
number of below proficiency students in the first school could still have shown great gains in
achievement levels from the previous year while the below proficiency students at the second school
show no indication of improvement. A growth model captures and recognizes this increase in learning.
Awarding credit only for the portion of students at grade level will also affect where schools dedicate
their resources. Schools will also have the perverse incentive to dedicate their limited resources toward
those students on the brink of achieving grade level and therefore most likely to bump up the school’s
performance scores, at the expense of those students on the margins- the highest achievers, who are
already where they need to be, and the lowest performers, who may be viewed as unable to become
proficient.
Ironically, the use of growth as an accountability measure was pioneered by North Carolina in the ABCs
accountability system. The wisdom of North Carolina’s approach has been attested to by the numerous
states that have added a growth component to their accountability systems and by the developing
consensus within the federal government that the next ESEA reauthorization needs to include a growth
component in any accountability measurement. Growth is even a component of the system that served as
the model for North Carolina- Florida’s system bases 25% of each school’s final grade upon the percent
of students learning one year’s worth of knowledge, and bases another 25% upon each percent of lowest
performing students who are making a year’s worth of progress.
Accountability indicators such as the A-F letter grading system must recognize and credit those schools
and LEAs that are achieving progress in improving student achievement levels. Absent a growth
component, the state’s newly established letter grading system will not be accurately or fairly gauging
school and LEA performance. The state’s accountability system could also risk being out of alignment
ith any new ESEA reauthorization. NCSBA therefore asks that the General Assembly fulfill its pledge4
to incorporate growth into the newly established A-F letter grading system.
S.L. 2012-142, sec 7A.3(f) declared that “It is the intent of the General Assembly to add a student growth component to
student performance grades.”
4