Tag: A through F

West Virginia School Board Approves Compliance Plan

West Virginia’s state school board has approved a federal Every Student Succeeds Act compliance plan that includes a new public accountability system to replace the one that assigned A-F grades to entire schools.

Media reports say Gov. Jim Justice will decide whether to sign the plan approved by the state Board of Education on Friday. The U.S. Education Department also must review it and decide whether to sign off.

The draft plan has undergone changes from the version posted online for public comment last month.

State Department of Education Communications Director Kristin Anderson had said a copy of the new draft plan would be provided, but state education officials didn’t provide a copy. State education department officials say the draft will be provided after Justice’s sign off.

W.Va. Public Schools Are Now Being Graded

The West Virginia College and Career Ready Standards are being implemented for the first time in West Virginia schools this fall and so is a new system to grade the schools themselves.

Lawmakers were updated about the implementation of both the new standards and the accountability system during an interim meeting at the Capitol Monday. The system measures the performance of individual schools and gives them an A through F grade based on a variety of factors.

83 percent of a school’s performance is based on growth and student proficiency. The remaining 17 percent is based on non-performance items like attendance, graduation rates, and passage of dual-credit and AP courses.

West Virginia Board of Education member Lloyd Jackson says the grades the schools receive are directly tied to the standards taught in the classroom.

“We can’t constantly be changing our standards,” Jackson said, “Our assessments need to be aligned and they need to be consistent. Our accountability system has to operate over a number of years to be the kind of indicator of growth we want to see, and yes, we have to build capacity in those schools, but in order to know where to do that is to pin it on the results of our system as I’ve outlined to you.”

Jackson says the 2015-2016 grades for schools will be released in the next few months.

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