State: Mobile pupils out, grades climb

Principal John Fielding always suspected that many of the children who switch in and out of his school from the apartments of Gainesville were dragging down his school's test scores.

Now he knows for sure.

Fielding's school, Idylwild Elementary School, got an A grade from the state for last school year's test scores, up from a D grade the previous year. The A grade came in the first year that the scores of "mobile" students, those who move during the school year, did not count toward school grades.

Did the elimination of mobile-student scores help improve school grades?

In the case of Idylwild and more than 120 other schools, the answer is yes.

An analysis of recently released statewide test data shows that Idylwild would have gotten a C grade if scores for 10 mobile students had been included. That's better than the previous year's D grade, which included mobile student scores. But it's a far cry from the remarkable one-year leap from a D to an A that Idylwild celebrated.

Statewide, 146 schools would have gotten different grades if the mobile student scores had been included. That's about six percent of the roughly 2,400 schools that received grades statewide.

However, 24 of those schools would have gotten a higher grade; the mobile kids would have actually boosted their scores. But, as expected, the vast majority would have gotten lower grades had the mobile scores been included as in previous years.

Mobility refers to students who switch schools during the school year as their family's address changes.

"Tell you the truth, I was surprised at an A," Fielding said. "I knew we wouldn't get another D. I thought there was a reasonable chance we could get a B. But an A? I didn't expect that."

Proud as he is of the A grade, Fielding readily acknowledged that the elimination of the mobility scores was a factor in his school's grade change.

"Of course it was," he said. "That's what we've been saying all along. Grade us on what we've done. If we have time to work with those kids, we should be held accountable for their performance. But if we don't even have time to work with the kids ..."

The Florida Department of Education has been reluctant to release detailed information about mobile-student test scores as they tout the rise in school grades statewide.

Overall test scores were released seven months ago, as were school grades, but former Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher declined to identify the schools whose grades were affected by the exclusion of mobility scores. Gallagher gave two reasons: First, he said a review of the data convinced him that the change "likely did not have a substantial impact on school grades," and he didn't want to create confusion or cast doubt on a school's improved grade.

Charlie Crist, the newly elected education commissioner, said shortly after taking office that he saw no problems with releasing that information in the future. But he hasn't decided whether to release the data for last school year's scores.

The department recently released the number of schools affected by the mobility change, but still won't name all the schools.

Rather than suggesting that some schools' high grades weren't earned, educators say the data points to the arbitrary nature of the state's accountability system. In short, for a school like Idylwild, perhaps the miraculous improvement was due not so much to an academic turnaround, but was merely an indication that the state now is more accurately measuring what Idylwild is doing.

In other words, the state's tweaking of the rules calls into question not the A earned by Idylwild last school year, but the D given to Idylwild the year before.

"With these accountability systems, you make one change and some schools are going to go up. Make a different change and some schools are going to go down -- and it could have nothing to do with what goes on in the classroom," said Monty Neill, director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a frequent critic of the use of standardized tests.

"So it's silly," Neill said, "to say schools are all of a sudden doing a better job teaching. There tends to be in these systems a good deal of arbitrariness."

The idea of eliminating the scores of mobile students came from educators. When Gallagher held hearings around the state in 1999 to see what the public thought of the state's accountability system, many educators said it was not fair to hold them accountable for test scores of students who showed up weeks or even days before the test.

Gallagher listened to those complaints and agreed to eliminate mobility as a factor. Now scores do not count unless a student takes the standardized tests in February and March at the same school where he was enrolled in October.

That change was seen as little more than a minor tweaking of an accountability system that undergoes tinkering big and small every year. But after test scores and school grades improved dramatically last school year, questions were raised about how big a role the mobility factor played.

As Fielding of Idylwild Elementary said, "Changes like that don't occur overnight." He said he thinks his school has been working hard to enhance student achievement for years and that's what leads to improvement, regardless of the ups and downs of school grades.

As Gallagher said, the vast majority of Florida schools were unaffected by the change. Mobile children as a group scored lower on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test than did their peers. But their impact was limited because many schools had only a few children who took the test and fit the state's definition of mobility for accountability purposes.

At some schools, the mobile children did well on the test and would have boosted scores if their test results had been included.

For instance, at Idylwild the 10 mobile children would have helped the reading and writing scores. They scored a little higher than the school average -- and matched the state average -- in reading, with 58 percent scoring at level 3 and above. Schoolwide, only 56 percent of the Idylwild fourth-graders hit that mark. The mobile kids exceeded the school and state averages in writing.

The mobile student math scores, though, were dismal. If counted, they would have pulled down Idylwild's math scores, which were good enough for an A grade, but just barely.

To meet the state standards for scoring an A or B, the school needed 50 percent of its children scoring at level 3 and above in math, and Idylwild hit that mark on the nose. The mobile children missed that mark, with only 10 percent (which amounts to one child) scoring at level 3 and above. Counting or not counting those scores means the difference between an A and a C.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk