Scores will not count for final grades in first year

Freshman high school students taking the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness end-of-course exams this spring will no longer have to worry about the results of the first year of testing affecting their final grades.

The Georgetown ISD board of trustees approved a measure March 26 that would defer a requirement that STAAR scores count for 15 percent of a student's final grade for one year.

The deferment, while giving students a chance to see the test and how well they can expect to do in subsequent years, will allow school district officials to see how final grades would be affected by the grading policy adopted by the board of trustees earlier this year, Deputy Superintendent Brenda Albright said.

"We are going to do some 'what-ifs'," GISD Assessment Director Becky McCoy said. "What if this had been in effect? How would it have affected their grades? So we will run a spreadsheet, and we will figure if a student had this grade and they scored X, we'll be able to see if is this the best method or not or do we need to tweak it."

Debbie Ratcliffe, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman, said all test grades are expected to be given back to school districts by June 8.

Albright said district staff will take the results of this year's test and apply it to a student's grades as if it were required to determine how the test and the district's grading policy would affect final grades before the system is implemented next year.

The Georgetown STAAR grading policy assigns a numerical grade to each of the five possible student outcomes on the test. Students who fail to meet the minimum standard would receive a 69, while students who meet the minimum score but do not achieve a satisfactory academic performance level would receive a 75. The grades then increase in 10-point increments up to a perfect score of 100.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions, and we are always going to take the road that is going to give our students the best advantage possible," Albright said. "We've come up with a plan in the district that I think is a very good and a very fair plan. So we are very happy with the process we've outlined."

Albright said concerns arose, however, when it came to light that some districts had interpreted the law.

Grading controversy

According to the TEA, the scores for the STAAR exams should count toward 15 percent of a student's final grade, course credit and the student's class rank, Albright said. Problems emerged after some school districts said they would use the 15 percent toward a student's final grades, but not the other two requirements, she said.

"There is a lot of different interpretations as of what the statute actually said. It's our understanding that the spirit of the law said you will include it, so we did," Albright said. "Some of the other districts were choosing not to do that. That's where a lot of the screaming started."

The 15 percent weighted score has also been considered controversial by some because there is no consistent measure to determine a numerical grade from the rating system, McCoy said.

"Some school districts, for instance, [set it up as] pass-fail. You get a 100 or a 50," Albright said. "We did it incrementally where it would do the least amount of impact to the student, and it would have the least impact on their grade—the grade would truly reflect what they did in the course up to this point."

Because of those concerns, TEA Commissioner Robert Scott announced he would defer the 15 percent requirement for the 2011–12 school year only, Albright said.

"Both the [state] House and Senate gave him permission to offer this deferment to districts to give him time to re-evaluate. Not to re-evaluate the test; it's going to happen, but it's going to give them time to rethink some of this," Albright said.

As of March 20, 405 of the 1,215 districts had notified TEA of their plans to defer the requirement, and that number was expected to increase before the May 1 deadline, Ratcliffe said.

"Every school district will determine how that is done," McCoy said. "There has been so much controversy and even the Legislature backtracking and saying we have a year to study this—who knows what the future holds for the 15 percent requirement."

Albright said she does not expect the TEA to develop a set grading policy because those decisions are made at the district level.

"I'm not exactly sure at this point how we are going to achieve consistency among other districts, but they may in fact give us better guidelines," Albright said. "We would adopt their guidelines into our policies that would help us achieve that consistency, because I believe that is really the crux of the matter right now."