Top schools have tough time

Schools who score an A on the FCAT find it is almost impossible to repeat. One administrator has a plan to thwart the controversial state test.

By ROBERT KING

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 10, 2001

Tongue planted firmly in cheek, School Board chairman Jim Malcolm proposed a new strategy last week in the quest to conquer Gov. Jeb Bush's school accountability system.

Let's tell our students to purposely fail the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, he said.

"It's preposterous," Malcolm admits. "But, the thing of it is, out of exasperation you just say, "Do it this way.' "

Malcolm's exasperation -- shared by several educators in Hernando County -- is based on the reality that high grades in the governor's grade book are easier to get if you start with rotten FCAT scores at the beginning and gradually improve later.

The much tougher road -- as evidenced in the first three years of the accountability plan -- has been the one taken by schools that have quickly reached the promised land of high scores: A grades and cash incentive money.

For them, it seems there's nowhere to go but down.

Five Hernando County schools earned A grades on the first two report cards handed out by the state in 1999 and 2000. None of them could repeat the feat the following year.

The same pattern is holding true in other school districts in the Tampa Bay area.

According to a count done by the Times, 89 schools in Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough and Citrus counties made A's in 2000. Only 23 repeated with A's this year.

That means only about one A school in four was able to repeat.

To what extent that holds true across Florida isn't clear. The Department of Education could not determine how many schools across Florida managed back-to-back A's. But the number of A's did drop this year, from 579 to 568.

Frequently, it seems, when A schools drop, they careen all the way down to a C.

What trips up most schools is the minimum requirement for a B: From one year to the next, the number of students scoring at the lowest reading level can increase by no more than 2 percent.

Deltona, J.D. Floyd and Westside elementary schools -- all of which earned A's in 2000 -- were each tripped up by that clause this year. Each took home a C.

Only Fox Chapel Middle School, an A school in 2000, managed to stop its skid at a B.

School officials say a 2 percent margin of error -- which at some elementary schools amounts to a difference of three students -- is so small that things like a student with a tummy ache here and a child who got a bad night's sleep there can doom an entire school.

It doesn't help that A schools, by definition, have already set a high standard for themselves.

"There's a point when you get high that it becomes very difficult to maintain that margin," said Suncoast Elementary principal Tizzy Schoelles, who has already learned that lesson of accountability.

Two years ago, Suncoast made an A. Then it dropped to a C. Now it's back up to an A. In the space of three years, it has been rated on the state's report card as both outstanding and mediocre.

"I think the education is pretty much the same," Schoelles said.

Such realities mean Suncoast and the three other Hernando schools that earned A's this year -- Brooksville, Pine Grove and Spring Hill elementaries -- enjoy a bittersweet reward for their work.

"Next year, there's a good chance they'll be a C school even though they have worked just as hard," said Superintendent John Sanders. He calls the grading system a "travesty."

Exhibit A, according to most Hernando educators, is Chocachatti Elementary.

It had the best overall scores in the county in math and writing. It had the second-best score (next to Suncoast) on the reading test. On all three exams, Chocachatti obliterated the state average.

Yet Chocachatti was a C school while four other schools in the county received A's.

The school was hurt to a great extent because of the astronomical numbers it put up last year. In its first year of operation, Chocachatti had the best scores in the county. In writing, 97 percent of its fourth-graders met the state standard.

Had it been given a grade, Chocachatti would have earned an A. But the state doesn't grade first-year schools. When it became eligible for a grade this year, a slightly lower percentage of Chocachatti's fourth-graders met the state standard in reading than the year before. And it was relegated to a C.

To get an A next year, Chocachatti's struggle will not get any easier. Aside from what it must do in reading and math, Chocachatti must cope with the fact that this year 99 percent of its fourth-graders met the state standard in writing.

How do you improve on near perfection?

"You maintain it," said JoAnn Carrin, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

Actually, the state allows a little breathing room. Only 95 percent of Chocachatti's fourth-graders must meet the writing standard next year for the school to get an A.

Still, Carrin defends the quirks of the grading system.

First, she says the system is designed "so that no child is left behind." It is why schools like Chocachatti, even with their outstanding overall scores, can be penalized for allowing a few more children to trickle into the lowest levels.

Secondly, the system is intended to push schools to make continuous improvement. That's why schools are allowed so little room to fall from year to year.

While that sounds nice in Tallahassee, school administrators in Hernando County are wondering how realistic it is.

"It is almost impossible," said Elaine Wooten, the district's curriculum specialist for elementary education.

Janet Yungmann-Barkalow, the principal at J.D. Floyd Elementary, agrees that schools should be held accountable. But she says the current yardstick -- which knocked her school from an A to a C in one year -- is "a little crooked, a little slanted."

"It sort of makes you feel like you are constantly walking on eggshells," Yungmann-Barkalow said. "It keeps the pressure on, and that's difficult, because you can only keep pressure on for so long."

At another defrocked A school, Deltona Elementary principal Janet Dunleavy said there are limits to the improvement a school can make. "I think you can only take (students) so far, and then I think you run into (the fact that) this is as far as you can get them to go, realistically," Dunleavy said.

Elementary schools have had the most experience with the ups and downs of the grading scale. Seven of the 10 elementary schools have earned A's at some point over the past three years. Only Chocachatti and two schools that have earned a D -- Eastside and Moton -- have failed to reach the top rung.

"That tells me we have some excellent schools," Wooten said.

Fox Chapel is the only middle school to grab an A. The county's high schools have managed nothing other than a C.

Malcolm's farcical idea to purposely go for F's is, as he admits, the wild thought of a man who doesn't believe high-stakes testing is the way to improve public schools.

Still, it's an idea that could bring the county a solid financial windfall.

Florida schools that get A's or improve their scores receive cash incentives from the state equal to $100 per student.

After enduring one year of embarrassment for having 17 failing schools, Hernando County could receive $1.7-million the following year if each school just improved to a D. There would be another $1.7-million in it the following year if the schools improved again.

"I'm not saying stop teaching them, shut down the schools and take a break," Malcolm said. Instead, he says schools could conduct business as usual but just tell the kids to disregard the exams when it comes time for the annual testing ritual.

"We can get rewards through failure," Malcolm said.

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