The first A-F school grades sent to districts for their 10-day review have changed five or six times since their release Wednesday due to miscalculations by the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
This has frustrated school administrators statewide who are working to analyze the data that underpin the grades to make sure the grades are accurate before they are presented for certification to the state Board of Education on Oct. 29.
Jenks Superintendent Stacey Butterfield said school grades in her district had changed at least four times.
"They literally were changing again this morning. The thing is, no communication has come from the state department since they told us we could access the grades online yesterday," she said early Thursday. "We need accurate data. These ongoing changes make it difficult for us to believe that this data is accurate, valid and reliable."
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On Thursday afternoon, an email went out to superintendents, principals and district testing coordinators from Assistant State Superintendent Maridyth McBee informing them that the deadline for reporting errors had been extended from Oct. 27 to Oct. 28 because of the problems.
"It came to our attention yesterday that the bottom 25 percent growth on the A to F report card was calculated incorrectly," the email reads. "A last-minute correction was made immediately before posting that inadvertently caused the errors. We are working to remedy this problem as swiftly as possible, and we will notify all districts once this has been corrected. ... I deeply regret the challenges you experienced yesterday afternoon."
Broken Arrow Assistant Superintendent Janet Dunlop said her district has decided not to look at the grades right now.
"We're just chasing in circles," she said. "The bottom line is, the system just doesn't work. It's not an indication of whether students are successful academically."
Shirley Simmons, assistant superintendent of educational services for Norman Public Schools, emailed McBee Thursday to ask her to shut the site down until state officials get a handle on final grades.
"We're trying to check data that keeps changing," she said. As of late Thursday, Simmons said she hadn't heard back from McBee.
Earlier Thursday, state Education Department spokeswoman Tricia Pemberton told the Tulsa World that a last-minute correction made shortly before the grades were posted had caused the errors.
"We are working hard to make sure the correct grade cards are displayed," she said. "This is the purpose of the 10-day correction window before results are released to the State Board of Eduction and later to the public."
But several school administrators refuted that, saying the purpose of the 10-day window is for districts to make corrections to what the state posted.
Chris Johnson, assistant superintendent for school and district accountability and program management at Tulsa Public Schools, said his district has already started submitting appeals to the state because of data errors.
"The 10-day window has always been an opportunity for the districts to check the state's data to make sure it is correct and submit any type of data verifications or appeals to the state so we feel that our grade cards are correct," he said. "When the report cards originally came out around 3 o'clock yesterday, we had about 28 F's. About 45 minutes later, we had 50 F's. This morning, we had 47 F's and now we're down to 37 F's, so we don't know what to think."
He also said the state education department has twice missed its own announced deadlines for sending school report cards for review by local districts.
"Originally the deadline was the 10th and then it was the 15th and then they didn't release them until yesterday, the 16th," he said. "What's mostly inconvenient is they released them right before Fall Break, when the people at the schools who need to review the site data are off work and not here. That impacts that 10-day window and essentially cuts out two days."
State Superintendent Janet Barresi, McBee, Chief of Staff Joel Robison, Department of Education legal counsel Kim Richey and state Board of Education member Amy Ford are in Boston for a national education reform conference held by Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education.
State Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, the author of the original school report card law, is also in Boston, along with state Sen. John Ford, R-Bartlesville, and state Rep. Ann Coody, R-Lawton. Jolley was a panelist at the conference Thursday in a session about transparency in A-F school grading systems.
Kim Archer 918-581-8315
Andrea Eger 918-581-8470
