Rules for school grading changed

The removal of some students' scores creates questions about how much that affected grades.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY and DIANE RADO

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 3, 2000

Every school year, Miles Elementary School principal Deborah Coyle watches dozens of kids come and go. Many move into apartments near the school north of Tampa and are behind on their schoolwork when they show up.

Some enroll just before test time, and that means the state holds Coyle and her staff accountable for the performance of children they barely know and have only begun to teach.

Until this year.

For the first time this year, Florida did not hold schools accountable for the test scores of kids who entered their school in the weeks before the statewide tests. They subtracted those "mobility" scores before calculating school grades.

How big a role did that play in the remarkable improvement in school performance grades this year?

Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher wants to know. He instructed his staff to analyze the scores to see how many student scores were eliminated due to mobility, and what effect that had.

Educators like Deborah Coyle want to know too. Her school jumped from a D last year to an A this year. The elimination of the mobility factor, she acknowledges, probably helped. But how much?

"What happened is, mobility didn't hurt us this year," Coyle said. "That doesn't mean we get a good grade automatically. We still had to do a good job with the kids who were here all year. I think our scores show that we did."

Coyle had some company around the state. Of the 38 schools statewide that jumped three grades or more, 23 had annual mobility rates in 1998-99 (the last year for which the statistic is available) above the state average. The two schools with the biggest improvement (they leapt from an F to an A) had annual mobility rates that year significantly higher than the state average. The state has not yet released just how many students' test scores were discounted before the grades were released.

Now that the initial euphoria over the improved school grades has passed, educators are sifting through mounds of data trying to tease out trends and telltale signs to find out what worked so they can do it again.

Gov. Jeb Bush says competition, additional state money and the threat of vouchers spurred the improvement. Some principals say it was federal money that helped them lower class sizes. Others point to the elimination of those unpredictable mobility scores.

In the coming weeks, educators will be asking tough questions:

Are the improved scores for real?

Is it accurate to compare this year's scores with last year's when a key variable such as mobility was changed?

Did the state's academic turnaround happen in the classroom only? Or did at least some of it occur in a Tallahassee conference room when the rules were written?

"These are all very important questions," said Jim Watts, a vice president for state services at the Southern Regional Education Board who has studied school accountability in several states.

"These accountability systems can work, but only if they provide solid evidence of academic improvement," Watts said. "It has to be fair and it has to be accurate. Or you lose public confidence and the whole thing blows up."

Sandy Ramos doesn't want to take anything away from the tremendous academic gains in many of her schools.

The assistant superintendent in Pasco County saw all her D-rated schools improve. She saw the number of A's more than double. Some of the best news came from three of the district's poorest schools -- the ones with some of the kids who tend to struggle academically; they earned A's.

But Ramos wants to take a closer look.

She wants to know if the smaller class size made the big difference at some of the poorer schools. At West Zephyrhills Elementary, the infusion of federal dollars due to the high number of disadvantaged children enabled principal Madonna Wise to hire more teachers. Wise thinks the smaller class size helped greatly.

Ramos also wants to know how the elimination of the mobility factor helped.

"We still don't have a feel for it yet," Ramos said.

She couldn't say how big a factor mobility was, but all along Ramos and other educators have called for the state to eliminate that factor. For years educators have pointed to the folly of holding a teacher responsible for the reading skills of a child who entered her class days before the test. The assumption has been that those scores skew -- and hurt -- the overall scores. Sometimes, of course, those scores could help if a particularly bright student suddenly shows up in class.

"I think it's only fair; those scores shouldn't help you or hurt you, if you haven't been working with that child," Ramos said. "We were one of those saying, "If you have high mobility it really hurts.' I think it is a factor. We need to study that."

The only true test is to analyze the scores that were taken out. The state has not done that analysis yet. But a quick peek at the very different fates of high-mobility and low-mobility schools is a start.

Last year in Pasco, all 12 schools with a higher-than-average 1998-99 mobility rate got C or D grades. Half of them improved their grades this year. But half the lower-than-average mobility schools increased their grades as well.

In Pinellas County, the contrast from last year to this year was more pronounced. Last year, mobility was a dotted line separating the A and B schools from the C and D schools.

Last year, every elementary school with a 1998-99 mobility rate of over 35 percent (the state average) got a school grade of C or D. In contrast, 15 of the 16 schools with a very low mobility rate -- 20 percent or less -- got an A or B school grade.

This year, 13 of the 35 schools with higher-than-average mobility rates saw their grades increase, about 37 percent of the schools. Two of them -- Belleair and Southern Oak -- went from D to A grades, the highest increases in the school district. Two of the schools dropped a grade.

Southern Oak principal Robert Ammon said he too has long believed that he and his staff should be held accountable for his students' progress. But only if they've had time to work with the kids.

"We brought our math score up 21 points," Ammon said. "We've really been working on it, and it really paid off. To bring a student in a week before the test, before we even have a chance to work with him, that really kills you."

This year, it didn't hurt Ammon's test scores at all. Only the scores for kids who were around for all that focused math instruction counted, and the scores went through the roof.

More than anything, the elimination of the mobility factor this year calls last year's score into question. Does last year's D grade make sense, when it seems clear that Ammon and his staff clearly are doing the job with the students who have been around long enough to learn?

Watts said Florida can expect to go through a period of adjustment as it attempts to make the accountability system more fair and accurate. That's what has happened in other states.

"Believe me, no state got it right out of the chute," Watts said.

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