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Schools, Districts in Illinois To Be Graded on 100-Point Scale

Illinois' rating system, recently signed into law and scheduled to launch at least partially this school year, may surprise some parents and taxpayers because it gives so little weight to how students perform.

(TNS) — Like students taking a traditional classroom test, schools and districts across Illinois will be evaluated on a 100-point scale and given labels such as "exemplar" for earning 90 to 100 points, or "unsatisfactory" with scores 59 and below.

In between will be schools rated "proficient" and "needs improvement," all part of a new school rating system that follows in the footsteps of states that use A through F grades, one to five stars or other recognizable ways to convey the quality of schools to parents and the public.

Illinois' rating system, recently signed into law and scheduled to launch at least partially this school year, may surprise some parents and taxpayers because it gives so little weight to how students perform.

Just 30 percent of a school or district's score will relate to student achievement and academic progress, including how kids fare on state exams and how many graduate. That's an unusually low percentage compared with what other states are doing, according to researchers and educators.

The remaining 70 percent of the score will be based on "professional practices" that help schools improve, such as family involvement, decision-making that involves administrators, teachers and students, and school atmosphere, including whether kids feel safe and classrooms are clean, orderly and well equipped with learning materials.

Those elements drive student achievement and "lay the foundation for good success in any school," said Superintendent Todd Koehl of southwest suburban Troy School District 30-C. Koehl was one of several administrators around the state who helped develop the new scoring system for schools.

He said the group settled on 30 percent for student achievement because that's similar to the way educators are rated under a 2010 teacher evaluation law.

One of his district's schools, Shorewood Elementary, held a "Family Education Night" last month for parents and elementary students, an event that helps cement bonds between schools, parents and communities. Families roamed the colorfully decorated halls and classrooms and learned all about what their kids do in class every day.

It's those kind of activities that will take on new relevance under what the new law calls a "balanced accountability" scoring system, one that doesn't rely solely on test scores.

But whether the ratings ultimately represent a balanced view of schools will likely be a matter of debate.

Kathy Christie is a consultant and former vice president at the Education Commission of States, which tracks state policy around the country. She's worked extensively on what states are doing when it comes to rating schools.

"I would say that is uncommon to have most components (in a school rating system) not be based on academic performance," Christie said. "It's probably unusual to be less than 50 percent."

Chicago Public Schools has been using a rating system largely built around academic measures and student progress, but it plans to review its system in light of several factors. For example, the new state rating system is expected to use scores from the new Common Core-based PARCC exams as part of its scoring, but CPS has used different tests.

Bob Schaeffer, spokesman for the FairTest organization that opposes overuse and misuse of testing, acknowledged that basing just 30 percent of a school's score on student performance is a "much smaller percentage" than what is being used in other states — but he said it's a step in the right direction.

"Illinois policymakers are listening to the national movement which is calling for de-emphasizing test scores as a factor in evaluating schools," Schaeffer said.

Giving less weight to test results comes at a time when exam scores are dropping both in Illinois and around the country as the more difficult Common Core exams push students to perform at a higher level to prepare for college and careers.

In Illinois, preliminary results released recently from last spring's PARCC exams were dismal, showing that the vast majority of third-through-eighth grade students and some high school students scored too low to be considered ready for the next grade level, let alone college and careers.

The new school rating system is the latest version of a plan to determine how Illinois schools should be judged. In the recent past, Illinois proposed awarding stars to schools, like movies and restaurants get, as well as other approaches.

Those proposals were part of Illinois' request to get out of key elements of the federal No Child Left Behind law enacted in 2002, which led to most schools being labeled failures when too many children flunked state exams.

The negative labels stirred opposition from families, lawmakers and the Obama administration, which allowed states to come up with a multifaceted approach to rating schools, one that wouldn't be based solely on a snapshot performance on state exam day.

A statewide group of top education organizations called Vision 20/20 worked on developing the new rating system, with several local superintendents participating, many of whom have seen test scores nosedive in their districts. The work led to legislation that was approved in the spring and signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner July 30.

The new law doesn't fully mirror a rating system that the U.S. Department of Education approved earlier for Illinois, which focused predominantly on academic measures and not professional practices. That means the state may need to get permission from the Department of Education to proceed with the new rating system.

"As always, any time a state changes law, policies or practices that affect the commitments it has made ... it must submit an amendment request to the U.S Department of Education," said department press secretary Dorie Turner Nolt. "We would then review to determine whether these changes are in compliance."

Sara Boucek, legal counsel at the Illinois Association of School Administrators, said it was her understanding that additional federal approval is not needed.

Many of the details in the new law still need to be worked out, and parents and even educators aren't familiar yet with how the rating system will work and how points will be tallied.

What is known is that the 30 percent portion of a school's score includes several academic measures: Results on exams that test for college and career readiness; graduation rates; the extent to which students improve each year in schools and districts; and how well schools and districts do in narrowing the gaps in scores between groups of students, such as white compared with black or Latino students.

Complicating the formula is that schools will have different starting points when it comes to making academic progress, which will make comparisons more difficult for parents looking at data from school to school.

For this school year, only the student performance component will be reported to the public, and it's not clear if schools and districts will get actual ratings based on the 100-point scale. The professional practices part of the scoring will be added in starting in 2016-17 for some districts and will continue to phase in until 2021-22, when all districts will be scored using both components.

What is clear in the law are the final numbers that lead to school and district ratings:

•90 to 100 means exceeds standards — exemplar.

•75 to 89 means meets standards — proficient.

•60 to 74 means approaching standards — needs improvement.

•0 to 59 means below standards — unsatisfactory.

At Shorewood Elementary, several parents told the Tribune they like the idea of judging a school on a variety of measures, not just scores on state exams. As to the student academic performance component making up 30 percent of a school's score, it was hard to say.

Nicholas Warren, who attended Shorewood as a student and now sends his two children there, said 30 percent is fair to him.

But parent Meghan Joyner, a clinical social worker, said she wasn't sure about the 30 percent figure in the rating system.

However, she did recall disliking tests when she was a student, saying, "Testing causes anxiety and puts a lot of pressure on kids."

©2015 the Chicago Tribune; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.