Local district grades drop

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MADISON COUNTY — Area public school districts earned lower marks than in past years on the state’s evaluation system for school corporations — a trend seen statewide.

The Indiana Department of Education released letter grades recently for school corporations, and the number of Hoosier school districts that received an A mark dropped sharply.

In Madison County, the South Madison Community School Corp. received a B, and the Frankton-Lapel Community School Corp. was rated C for the 2015-16 school year.

Both were A-rated the year before.

About 8 percent of Indiana school districts received an A grade under ratings approved by the State Board of Education. That’s down from the 46 percent of Indiana’s 289 districts awarded an A rating last year.

The biggest jump was in districts receiving B ratings. Nearly 61 percent received B’s, up from 32 percent last year.

The district grades were released about a month after individual school ratings came out.

Local educators said they aren’t surprised to see their overall ratings drop after schools across the county saw lower scores.

But the grades released last year for 2014-15 aren’t a true measurement of how schools performed during that school year — the first year a harder ISTEP exam was given to students.

When assigning A-F grades last year, state lawmakers voted to protect schools from being graded on the more difficult ISTEP, since it was the first year the test was administered. That meant schools couldn’t receive lower letter grades than they did in the 2013-14 school year.

Similar protections have not been granted this year.

Accountability grades present a snapshot of how schools perform and are tied to whether teachers receive stipends and bonuses.

For the first time, the department of education used a new student-centered strategy for rating schools.

Historically, elementary and middle school grades were assigned based on the number of students who passed ISTEP. This year, however, the DOE also considered student improvement on the state standardized test. Schools received boosted ratings if they demonstrated student growth on those exams.

In an email to the Pendleton Times Post, South Madison superintendent Joe Buck noted how his district was not unlike the overall lower marks in districts throughout the state.

“In Indiana 46 percent of the school districts received a letter grade of an A last year. South Madison was one of those districts,” he wrote. “Only 8 percent of the school districts received an A this year.”

Still, Buck acknowledged the goal is to reach the highest standards and said he feels his district will accomplish that and reach the expectations in the future.

“Now that more rigorous academic standards have been established, we will continually strive for improvement and to raise our district letter grade of a B back to an A.”

The B mark was no doubt a disappointment for district officials who had earned four straight A marks dating back to 2011-12 before getting the B in 2015-16.

Frankton/Lapel’s drop, from an A district to a C, marks the first time the district has earned a C. The district was rated at B for three straight years before earning two straight A’s for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years.

District officials did not return emails or calls seeking comment on the 2015-16 C mark.

For elementary and middle schools, the letter grades are calculated solely from ISTEP performance; they don’t consider other assessments educators use to measure whether students understand the concepts they’re being taught.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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