Michigan Schools Scorecard (Update: Confused by Coloring Outside of the Lines?)

Some school leaders blast Mich. scorecard ratings

By Lori Higgins and Kristi Tanner Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

   A new accountability system launched Tuesday for Michigan schools shows many have a long way to go to meet ambitious goals set by the state — with most schools and districts earning a mark that indicates they are in need of improvement.

   The Michigan School Accountability Scorecards is a new system for holding schools accountable under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

   Schools and districts are assigned one of five colors — green, lime green, yellow, orange and red — based on how well they meet goals, with the color green being best and red being worst. The majority of schools in the state — 2,605 —got a yellow.

   The fact that few schools earned a top rating, many top-performing schools were identified as needing improvement, and most schools and districts earned a yellow drew mixed reactions.

   “The system is fatally flawed,” said Steve Matthews, superintendent in the Novi School District.

   State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said in a statement Tuesday that the system provides a diagnostic tool that gives schools, districts, parents and the public an easy way to identify strengths and weak- nesses.

   “It provides greater transparency and detail on multiple levels of school performance,” Flanagan said.

   “We now have new goals to reach and we will,” said Danelle Gittus, spokeswoman for Oakland Schools, the intermediate school district for Oakland County.

   The data show that most schools may struggle to meet the state’s eventual goal that 85% of students be proficient by the 2021-22 school year. And it also shows that many schools are struggling with certain groups of students.

   Of the 3,397 schools that received a color, only 96 got a green and few of them were schools that consistently post top test scores. And nearly half of that 96 — many of them charter schools — did not earn their green status because of promising scores on state exams. Most are new schools open only a year that were given the green status because they tested more than 95% of their students and because they complied with nonacademic requirements, such as filing an annual report. Others got a green for having a high attendance rate.

   A bulk of schools and districts — 77% and 69% respectively — earned a yellow.

   Of the 511 schools that re ceived a red color, 443 were traditional public schools and 68 were charter schools.

   Venessa Keesler, a deputy superintendent at the Michigan Department of Education, said last week that a yellow doesn’t mean a school is average. Yellow, she said, “is caution.”

   On Tuesday, she told reporters during a conference call that many schools struggled because they now have to be accountable for a new group of students — the lowest-achieving 30%.

   It indeed is difficult to get past a yellow score, based on the complicated formula the state uses to determine what a school has earned. Earning a green color “is extremely difficult,” said Judy Pritchett, chief academic officer for the Ma-comb Intermediate School District.

   A school or district earns a color based on the number of points it amasses — two points for each goal met, one point for each goal met by demonstrating improvement, and zero points if the goal isn’t met.

   A school must earn 85% or more of the points possible to get a green. The number of points schools can collect varies from school to school, and depends largely on how many populations of subgroups — based on racial, economic, English-speaking ability, special- education status — a school has.

   A school’s overall performance could earn it a green color. But a number of factors can drop that color down to a yellow, said Chris Janzer, director of the office of evaluation, strategic research and accountability at the MDE. For instance, if a school’s economically disadvantaged students fail to meet the academic goals, the best color a school can earn is a yellow. The same is the case if two of its subgroups don’t meet the requirement that 95% of students be tested.

   Matthews, the Novi superintendent, said the colors appear to have little to do with actual performance. He said a school with high test scores — even among its subgroups of students — could be rated lower than a school with lower test scores simply because it has more subgroups to be responsible for.

   “Each parent is now, as we speak, looking at the color of their school and comparing it to the color of other schools. Parents will assume incorrectly that schools with orange are worse than schools with yellow and that schools within yellow are all the same,” Matthews said. “It is not true.”

   Gittus said the new system is a better representation than an A-F system that some other states have adopted.

   “It takes into account a lot of different factors. Saying that your district is an A versus an F has a certain connotation that goes with it that we don’t think is fair,” Gittus said.

   The new accountability system replaces a key provision of the No Child Left Behind law that required states to identify whether a school met adequate yearly progress — based on test scores, test score improvement, graduation rates and attendance rates. The law had what many believe was an unrealistic goal that every student be proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year.

   The color-coded system is a better system in that respect because instead of everyone having to hit the same target, it “takes schools from where they are and recognizes progress year over year in a range where it’s realistic to think that they might be able to make such progress,” said Robert Floden, co-director of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University.

   State education officials said they hope the new system will provide parents and the community with more useful information to help them gauge how well a school is doing. But it may take time for people used to the old system to learn how to effectively use the new, state officials say.

MDE RELEASES ANNUAL SCHOOL RANKINGS

   The Michigan Department of Education also released its annual top-to-bottom ranking of schools, as well as lists of the worst-performing schools in the state, schools with large achievement gaps, and schools considered “reward” schools because they’re top-rated, beating the odds or have shown significant improvement The state list shows 137 schools labeled “priority” schools because they’re the lowest-ranked; 349 “focus” schools that have large achievement gaps and 342 “reward” schools. Priority schools must come under the supervision of the state school reform officer at the MDE and file an improvement plan. Focus schools may have to set aside some federal funding to help narrow the gaps. Detroit Public Schools, the state’s largest district, had 25 schools on the priority list, down from 36 last year. Some schools improved enough to come off the list, but are still following their turnaround plan, said Steve Wasko, spokesman for DPS. He said the district attributes the schools coming off the lists to consistent instruction, monitoring implementation of the academic plan, using data from assessments and ensuring the best teacher is in front of all students.

GREEN SCHOOLS IN METRO DETROIT

   What does it mean to be green? Nearly 100 schools statewide were assigned a green as part of the Michigan School Accountability Scorecards. Green is the highest rating a school can get, but of the 24 metro Detroit schools that got a green, nine of them (noted with an asterisk) only got a green for meeting non-academic factors such as attendance rates, testing at least 95% of their students, and/or for complying with other requirements such as filing an annual report.

   Macomb › Noor International Academy, charter school › Forest Park Elementary, East Detroit School District › Crescentwood Elementary, East Detroit School District Oakland › Oxford Virtual Academy, Oxford Community Schools › Edison MAX Day Treatment, Hazel Park School District › Novi Adult Education, Novi Community Schools › Kennedy Center, Pontiac School District Wayne › Crestwood Accelerated Program, Crestwood School District › University Prep Science/Math High, charter school › Beech Elementary, Redford Union School District › Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, charter school* › Regent Park Scholars Charter Academy, charter school › South Canton Scholars Charter Academy, charter school › Benjamin Carson School for Science and Medicine, Detroit Public Schools* › Starr Detroit Academy, charter school* › Detroit Innovation Academy, charter school* › Cornerstone Health School, charter school* › Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies: Elementary, charter school* › Madison-Carver Academy, charter school* › Plymouth Scholars Charter Academy, charter school* › Caniff Liberty Academy, charter school* › Webster Elementary School, Livonia Public Schools › Winans Academy High School, charter school › Hope of Detroit Academy Consortium High School, charter school

METRO DETROIT SCHOOLS IN 99TH PERCENTILE

   Each year the Michigan Department of Education issues a top-to-bottom ranking of schools — based largely on test scores, test score improvement and other factors such as graduation rates. Here are the Wayne, Oakland and Macomb schools ranked at the 99th percentile, the top ranking in the state. The 99th percentile rank indicates these schools perform better than 99% of the schools in the state.

   Oakland › Leonard Elementary School, Troy School District › Schroeder Elementary School, Troy School District › University Hills Elementary School, Rochester Community Schools › Van Hoosen Middle School, Rochester Community Schools › Bemis Elementary School, Troy School District › Musson Elementary School, Rochester Community Schools Wayne › Crestwood Accelerated Program, Crest-wood School District › Webster Elementary School, Livonia Public Schools› Brownell Middle School, Grosse Pointe Public Schools › Henry Ford Early College, Dearborn Public Schools