North Carolina assigns schools letter grades based on how many students pass state exams and a school’s improvement over time. But the state Board of Education has established a new task force to rethink that system.
Some educators have argued the state’s accountability system overvalues student test performance over growth, teaching strategies and other factors like class size or graduation rates.
State Superintendent Mo Green’s strategic plan calls for reforming the system. State Board Chair Eric Davis said at this week's meeting that the performance evaluation should identify what schools are good at teaching and where they struggle.
“The current model does not give us appropriate insights into this and it overlooks additional factors that provide a more complete and accurate picture of how well our schools educate and serve our students,” Davis said.
Board member Olivia Oxendine said she sympathized with the concerns but worried that student proficiency could get lost in favor of other factors.
“I don’t want an accountability model that’s just going to put lipstick on a pig,” Oxendine said. “I want an accountability model that is also about increasing the reading achievement of kids, the math achievement. I don’t hear that in this discussion. I hear about a change to how we weight this and how we weight that.”
Michael Maher, the Department of Public Instruction’s chief accountability officer, said that the state still has obligations under federal law to track proficiency in reading, math and science.
“Proficiency does matter, however, I think there are other things that happen in schools that we’re not fully accounting for,” Maher said.
He also noted that the current system weighs proficiency in a set of subjects that only 10% of teachers teach.
“So, 90% of the teachers in the school have little to no bearing on that performance grade,” Maher said.
The task force will begin its work this month. Members will consider things like student access to AP and career and technical education opportunities, plus whether the same system is appropriate for elementary, middle and high schools. The goal is to create a system that uses multiple measures, recognizes growth and equality of opportunity, and emphasizes readiness beyond graduation.
Maher said the task force will conduct its work in two phases. In the first phase, the task force will explore changes to the current accountability system. In the second phase, the task force will reimagine a completely new system from scratch.
The task force will consist of representatives from the state board of education, the General Assembly, educators, researchers, policy advocates, student advocates and other community and business leaders.
Thursday, Davis named state board members Alan Duncan, Jill Camnitz and Janet Mason as the board’s representatives to the task force.
