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School Grades No Simple Matter

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: July 12, 2008

LAND O'LAKES -- The test scores are in, and Pasco County public schools have once again made the grade.

Results of the 2007-08 school year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test were released Tuesday. Every school in the state gets a letter grade based on the standardized test, which is given in the spring.

Of the Pasco School District's 68 elementary, middle and high schools, 49 got an A or B grade, and 14 schools improved their grades from the year before.

The district also maintained its record of never having had an F school.

The grades have tangible significance for educators. Schools that get an A or improve a letter grade get $85 per student, most of which goes to teacher's bonuses.

Less tangible but just as significant in its own way is what's at stake to a school's image, having the bragging rights of high or improved scores or the stigma of a low score for the next year.

While districts use this time to celebrate their triumphs, at places like Richey Elementary School, a Title I school that earned an A rating this year, officials know there is more to the letter grades than meets the eye.

A Title I school has a significant portion of its enrollment coming from low-income families.

"It's almost too complex to explain in a newspaper article," Peggy Jones, the Pasco School District's director of research and evaluation, said in a interview.

"Parents need to understand these aren't like the grades you got on report cards when you were in school," Jones said, offering an abbreviated explanation. "When a D means the work you did all year averaged a D."

FCAT grades are determined based on a point system, Jones explained. The grades are determined by totals from scores in eight different categories.

Students are tested in four subjects: math, reading, writing and science. Students who score at a certain level or higher are considered "proficient." The school gets points based on the percentage of students who reach that level.

For instance, if 59 percent of students at a school test at a proficient level in math, that's 59 points.

At the same time, there are two categories based on individual improvement. Points are scored for the percentage of students who show improvement for their grade level from the year before.

Then there are two more categories that look only at the students who are in the lowest 25th percentile in math and reading, and scores points for the percentage of students in this group have shown improvement.

Scoring at the "proficient" level is not the issue here, Jones explained. What matters is that students have made adequate progress over the past year, she said.

If a ninth-grader who was at a fourth-grade reading level becomes a 10th-grader reading at the seventh-grade level he might still be near the bottom of his class. That improvement, however, would be worth a point toward his school's grade.

With eight categories, there are 800 points total, and schools' grades are based on a preset scale. But there's a catch, Jones said.

Those last two categories – improvements by the lowest 25th percentile in math and reading – carry extra weight. Schools that don't get at least 50 points in each of these categories, cannot move up a grade from the year before, regardless of their overall scores.

No school got hit harder by this system than Ridgewood High School, one of only two schools in the county that got a D this year. The other was Rodney B. Cox Elementary School, in Dade City.

Ridgewood got a D last year, as well, just missing the cutoff to a C by a few points. While schools usually aim to improve by a couple points in each category, Ridgewood averaged double-digit proficiency improvements in three of the four subjects.It also achieved individual student improvement in math and reading, and an eight-point increase in math among its lowest 25th percentile students.

Overall, Ridgewood improved its overall FCAT score by 60 points. It hadn't just crossed into the C range, Ridgewood was knocking on the door of a B.

Such as two-grade jump in one year would have been a rarity. But the school fell five points short in the percentage of lowest percentile students to show improvements in reading.

In essence, taking into consideration the size of the school population at Ridgewood, 2,000-plus, the performance of about 15 of the schools poorest readers was the difference between another year being labeled a D school and sharing the spotlight with Gulf High School, which moved up from D to C.

While there are arguably flaws in the grading system, Jones said, the FCAT scores do provide valuable information to people like her whose job it is to analyze the results.

"It becomes a roadmap to help you identify where you need to put school resources," she said.

Klint Lowry can be reached at 727-815-1067 or klowry@suncoastnews.com.

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