School districts in Columbia and Marion County school districts both fell a letter grade in the latest state ratings from a B to a C, but it’s not as bad as that sounds.
The grades are derived from a host of factors, among them standardized test scores, how much students improve and graduation rates. Those are added up to an overall score. The state then sets a curve based on that overall score so that there are so many A districts, so many B’s and so on.
Here are the total scores for the two local districts:
Marion County
2016: 590
2017: 595
Columbia
2016: 589
2017: 587
So Marion County actually improved, but it fell victim to a shifting curve. The state allowed it to officially keep its B because of that.
And Columbia’s two-point change out of nearly 600 was really insignificant as far as much how students are learning.
After years of different tests and grading systems, this is the second year of having everything the same. Hopefully those two factors are finally stabilized so Mississippians can begin to have consistent data to measure schools over several years.
But to do that, the state needs to go a step further and eliminate the curve.
There should be an objective standard that districts can attain to reach a certain grade, regardless of what others in the state are doing. Grading on a curve makes little sense as far as promoting learning, although it would appear to be designed to help state officials save face by at least having some A districts every year after there were not many at all a couple of years ago. In this case, Marion County and Columbia seemed to lose out because of that tactic.
For too long, the modus operandi of the Mississippi Department of Education has been to obscure its weaknesses from the people and legislature. In response, newly empowered Republican legislators have taken steps over the past decade to try to stop some of that. One way was setting the letter grades to give the public a simple explanation of how things are going. Another one that is needed now is dumping the curve.
— Charlie Smith
