Tulsa-area officials are among a growing group of individuals seeking to delay a vote on the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s final proposal to overhaul the A-F school report card system.
State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said the delay is “unnecessary” and she is fully committed to the proposal she will ask the state Board of Education to approve on Thursday.
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Hofmeister has overseen a months-long effort to gather public input and a task force that recommended a reboot of Oklahoma’s much-maligned A-F school grading system. In doing so, she said repeatedly she anticipated that federal education regulations would require it to persist.
But on Nov. 28th — after the task force’s final meeting — the U.S. Department of Education released final regulations that revealed states will not be required to grade schools with A-F letter grades or other single indicator score of school performance after all.
Tulsa-area education and business leaders have added their signatures to a letter that will be sent to Hofmeister and the state Board of Education early this week, requesting a delay “until the committee and stakeholder groups have had the opportunity to reconvene and examine the impact of the final regulations on the accountability system proposal.”
“Specifically, (federal) regulations clarify that states are not required to issue a single summative indicator for each public school district or school. This is a significant change that came subsequent to the task force’s last meeting,” reads the letter. The Tulsa World obtained an unsigned copy of the letter.
Jenks Superintendent Stacey Butterfield said she remains opposed to labeling schools and districts with a single letter grade, but she is encouraged by what the task force produced. Now, she wants that same task force to be able to take into consideration the new federal regulations that were just handed down before state education officials move forward.
“At this point, we’re pleased with what we’re learning about this system. I really don’t have anything I would say I wish it did more of,” Butterfield said. “I just think it’s important for the task force making this recommendation to the state board to consider all of the information. That is not a criticism of the state department or that task force; it’s just an issue with the timing.”
Butterfield says she is not opposed to holding schools accountable.
“We haven’t changed course or changed direction. We’re not opposed to accountability and transparency,” she said. “I don’t believe one letter grade can be used to depict the abilities or performance of any one student over an entire school year or the overall picture of an entire year at a school or district.”
She also noted that Jenks Assistant Superintendent Lisa Muller is listed on the state’s final A-F draft proposal among the dozens of state task force members but she was not a participant and has asked to have the report corrected.
Zack Stoycoff, director of government affairs at the Tulsa Regional Chamber and a member of the state task force that produced the proposal, said Hofmeister is to be praised for her leadership on the issue. But his organization signed the letter seeking a delay because more time is needed to weigh the new information from the U.S. Department of Education.
“I think the letter really represents how much esteem we hold Superintendent Hofmeister in,” Stoycoff said. “This isn’t about an individual or the process, we would just welcome the opportunity to have another conversation. It seems reasonable.”
Oklahoma’s school grade cards were intended to make it easy for parents and communities to gauge the performance of public schools, but their legitimacy has been undermined by public criticism from educators and parents, as well as multiple rounds of analysis by research scientists from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University.
The final recommendation to overhaul the system that Hofmeister will deliver to the state Board of Education this week states that it is intended to be “a blueprint to construct the accountability system” and a starting point “with a fairly simple list” of school performance indicators that meets the requirements of both Oklahoma House Bill 3218 and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, but which could have other indicators added and refinements made in the future.
Shawn Hime, executive director for the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, said its member districts voted at its annual conference to make a goal of advocating for the state Legislature to replace “the single summative A-F system with a multiple indicator accountability system.”
“The final (federal) rules came out on Nov. 28, and they no longer require a single summative grade. With many in the education community and others associated with it, that has been a big principal issue in opposing the current accountability system,” Hime said. “We want multiple indicators for parents and stakeholders to see rather than a single letter grade that cannot accurately reflect the educational effectiveness of a school site or district. That has been backed up by OU and OSU and other researchers around the country.”
Hofmeister has been a leading critic of the state’s current school grading system, pointing most often to its “masking” of both student growth indicators, as well as troubling trends like too-low high school graduation rates in schools with above average grades.
She repeatedly slammed the state’s A-F grade card system as “broken” during her successful 2014 bid for office, and both times her administration has released annual grade cards, she has done so with public disclaimers about the validity problems she sees in the current system.
Hofmeister says she and the state Board of Education are out of time on the new proposal because Oklahoma House Bill 3218, approved by the Legislature this session, requires them to deliver new student assessment and school accountability systems no later than the end of December, and the board members cannot meet later this month.
“What we did was create a system that was reflective of Oklahoma input and values of what would inform schools and communities. That work was not dependent on what the federal guidelines would be,” Hofmeister said.
“There was discussion about the merits of different kinds of systems of accountability and we heard that. To come together to hear that point of view again was just not necessary and there wasn’t enough time.”
Hofmeister said she has been getting positive feedback from school districts that have taken the time to test out the proposed system with last year’s data.
“It’s important that school districts take the time to run their own data simulations,” she said. “When they do that, they will begin to understand and appreciate the significant overhaul of our system that this represents.”
School district officials said Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist was not approached about signing the letter seeking the delay. Gist has been a vocal critic of Oklahoma’s current A-F grading system since coming here after a six-year stint as education commissioner in Rhode Island.
“I commend State Superintendent Hofmeister for the inclusive process the department used to craft Oklahoma’s new school accountability proposal,” Gist said in a written statement. “The proposal responds to some of Tulsa’s priorities and most significant concerns, including a heavier emphasis on growth and performance gap closure. While we have not yet seen how this new system performs with actual student data, we are confident that it is a step in the right direction.”
Her predecessor, Keith Ballard, led statewide opposition to the state’s first-ever A-F calculation methods when he was superintendent at Tulsa Public Schools. Now a professor in the University of Oklahoma’s College of Education and director of the Professional Development Leadership Academy at OU-Tulsa, Ballard said validity is impossible for any single-grade school accountability system.
“While I appreciate the work and input from the committee, I cannot support a single grade score,” he said. “As a university professor, the research clearly shows that it is invalid. As a former superintendent who saw the failed results of a single grade, I remain firmly opposed to it. I believe in an assessment of schools, but not A-F.”
