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Illinois is planning to change how it labels schools and switch some of the data it uses to assign those designations.
A draft of the accountability redesign posted by the Illinois State Board of Education indicates there would still be five labels, but their names would change slightly. The proposed changes would eliminate the use of the 9th-grade On-Track metric, which measures the percentage of freshmen likely to graduate based on their attendance and grades.
The draft also suggests swapping out chronic absenteeism, which measures how many students are absent for 10% or more of the school year, and instead measuring how many students are present for 90% or more of the school year.
The new labels schools would get — in descending order of highest performing to lowest — would be Exemplary, Commendable, Approaching, Developing, and Comprehensive. That varies from the current groupings of Exemplary, Commendable, Comprehensive, Targeted, and Intensive.
If approved by state and federal officials, the new rating system would be rolled out next fall. It comes after officials this year changed the cut scores used on annual standardized tests to determine whether students are considered proficient. In accordance with federal law, all third through eighth and 11th grade students enrolled in public schools are tested each spring
States are required to have an accountability system under federal education law. This has been the case since at least 2002 when Congress mandated all students in third through eighth grade and 11th grade be tested in math and reading every year.
The labels in Illinois are determined using a complex calculation that gives weight to certain metrics, such as attendance, graduation rates, and math, reading, and science scores. The calculation also takes into account how well a school does serving specific groups of students, such as those with disabilities or those learning English.
“The current system has been mislabeling schools in much the same way our assessments once misidentified students,” State Superintendent Tony Sanders wrote in his weekly message on Oct. 28.
Currently, the top 10% of schools are automatically labeled Exemplary and then the next roughly 70% have been deemed Commendable. Sanders likened this to grading on a curve with no fixed criteria to earn a certain rating.
The proposed draft designations would change the underlying formula used in a way that would lead to a broader distribution of the labels across schools, according to ISBE.
State officials are holding three public meetings to gather feedback on the proposed accountability redesign starting Thursday.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.
