State Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano Story Archives

Public School Grades Released Under New A-F System

The West Virginia Board of Education has approved the final grades for public schools across the state under a new accountability system.

The state Board has been working since 2013 to create and implement the new school accountability system after a legislative directive and urging from Gov. Tomblin. It gives schools a grade of A through F so that parents can more easily understand how their child’s school is doing.

More than 80 percent of the individual school grades are based on student standardized test scores and progress made on the tests from year to year.

“All of those standardized test are directly linked to the daily activities in classrooms, to our standards. Our formative assessments, our quizzes, our exams in class are all rolled up into this,” West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Martirano said.

“So, it’s more than just one snapshot, it represents the entire body of work that a teacher conveys through the year by delivering our standards.”

Martirano said high school graduation rates, attendance, and other measures are also included in the school grades.

But some statewide teachers groups are less than satisfied with the measurements, including the West Virginia Education Association. WVEA Executive Director Dale Lee told reporters at a press conference Tuesday the school grades are too predominantly based on test scores that only show a “single snapshot of a single day.”

“We’re not saying that you shouldn’t let people know how schools are doing, we’re saying there are numerous things that go into measuring how well a school is doing,” Less said, “but the connotation of you’re a D school or you’re an F school based on a single test score without the proper education of the public, that community then going to look and say, I told you. That school is bad, an F is an F, an F is failure.”

Lee worried those kinds of attitudes in communities will cause them to pull their support from a struggling school.

Board of Education President Mike Green said as the system was created, multiple measures were included in the grades, but clarity is the key.

“The important thing is that the public will now clearly understand exactly where there school stands,” Green said Wednesday.

The baseline scores for this first year under the new system were set on a bell curve, resulting in most schools receiving a “C” designation. The breakdown for the 668 schools measured in West Virginia include:

6.7 percent A
24.3 percent B
53.3 percent C
13.5 percent D
2.2 percent F

The grades are based on a 1,200 point scale for middle and elementary schools and a 1,500 point scale for high schools.

Superintendent: State Achieves Historically High Graduation Rate

West Virginia high school students have achieved the state’s highest graduation rate on record.

During the 2015-2016 school year, West Virginia graduated 89.8 percent of its high school seniors.

State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Martirano announced the historic graduation rate at George Washington High School in Charleston Tuesday morning.

The rate is up from 86.5 percent the previous school year. Martirano, who has a goal of 90 percent for the state, said the number is important because it represents real students succeeding.

“What does this mean? It’s that we’re providing hope t our young people, to our state, that indicates every child graduates college and career ready and can make contributions to our state,” Martirano said.

After the 2014-2015 school year, West Virginia ranked 18^th in the nation for graduating students. Martirano added only one state had a 90 percent graduation rate that year.

Superintendent Opens Testing Meetings to Public

West Virginia’s state schools superintendent has announced the time and location of the next Superintendent’s Commission on Assessment meeting.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Superintendent Michael Martirano said in a news release Monday state schools decided to reconsider their decision to keep the meetings closed. Martirano says he is committed to transparency.

The superintendent also publicly released the names of members of his new advisory commission of statewide standardized testing. The commission’s next meeting will be 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Capitol Complex in Charleston.

Martirano formed the commission following a decision by the state’s board of education to change its K-12 math and English language arts education standards.

W.Va. Standardized Test Discussion Won't Be Public

A new West Virginia commission’s discussions of possibly changing standardized testing won’t be public.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that State Schools Superintendent Michael Martirano has formed a commission to study and suggest changes to end-of-year standardized testing.

State education officials say the meetings of the 25-member commission won’t be open to the media or to the wider public. The commission is composed of unidentified parents, teachers, superintendents and lawmakers, among others.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires states to give annual standardized tests to practically all students in reading and math for grades three through eight in addition to one grade in high school. West Virginia currently goes beyond the requirement by testing grades nine, 10 and 11 in high school.

Second Launch Gives Computers Second Home in W.Va. Classrooms

A new program through the West Virginia Department of Education is taking state government issued computers and turning them into training tools for students of all ages.

The WVDE introduced the program Friday called Second Launch WV, a partnership with the West Virginia Office of Technology.

Second Launch takes computers that are being cycled out of use at state agencies, like the Department of Corrections or Division of Highways, cleans out their databases and places the refurbished desktops in classrooms across the state.

“Computers that once sat in other offices, we’re now taking those computers and refurbishing them in a way where [we can] have them in our schools for usage,” State Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano said at the launch event in Belle Friday.

Martirano was joined by Gayle Given, director of the state Office of Technology, and Sterling Beane, director of the state Department of Education Office of Technology, at Country Kids Day Care in Belle where a group of four and five-year-olds showed off the programs they have access to thanks to the new technology.

Students navigated through games that teach shapes, colors, letters and numbers in small groups.

“This cannot be about the haves and the have nots,” Martirano said. “It cannot be about It cannot be about young people in certain zip codes having access and other young people who live in other zip codes not having access.”

“For me, it’s about doing the right thing for young people to ensure that they have the tools to advance.”

So far, more than 3,000 computers have been returned to classrooms in 30 counties, saving the state $965,000 in just a few months. The program’s goal is a savings of $5 million in five years.