State Board Delays Consideration of School, District Performance Grades for 2017-18 School Year until October

 

For Immediate Release: September 20, 2018

 

JACKSON, Miss. – The Mississippi State Board of Education (SBE) voted today to delay until October consideration of approval of letter grades for the 2017-18 school year for schools and districts based on Mississippi’s A-F accountability system.

 

Statewide accountability data sent under embargo to school district superintendents and members of the media on Sept. 17 are unofficial. The embargo was set to lift at noon today. However, because the SBE did not approve the grades, they are not the official grades of school and district performance. School districts and members of the media are advised to wait until October to report SBE-approved grades.
 
The SBE voted in August to establish a temporary rule to reset the baseline scores for establishing accountability grades for schools that have a 12th grade. The reset would address the lack of comparability to growth scores in prior years. The SBE will decide today whether to make this temporary rule permanent.

 

The new Mississippi Succeeds Report Card, which was set to launch today, will not be published until the SBE approves accountability grades.

 

Accountability grades are based, in part, on how well students perform and progress from year to year on the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) tests for English language arts (ELA) and Mathematics. These tests are aligned to the Mississippi College and Career Ready Standards and are administered annually to students in grades 3-8 and in high school. Overall, students showed statistically significant gains in both ELA and Mathematics from 2016-17 to 2017-18.

 

The accountability system places an emphasis on the progress students make in ELA and Mathematics from year to year, particularly the lowest performing 25 percent of students, and factors in how well students perform on science tests in grades 5 and 8. Accountability grades for high schools and districts include the four-year graduation rate, student performance on Biology, U.S. History and ACT tests, and student participation and performance in advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement and dual credit/dual enrollment courses.
 
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