Letter grades awarded to schools by the Arizona State Board of Education aren’t necessarily accurate representations of school worth, according to Phoenix education officials.
All of Phoenix Union High School district’s downtown Phoenix high schools, with two exceptions, were given a B or higher letter grade by the board.
“It’s a scoreboard,” said Craig Pletenik, communications director for PUHSD. “There’s always going to be A’s, and there is always going to be D’s and F’s. Our sense of it, especially for some of our schools that are C’s and are potentially D schools, is that we don’t believe that it makes them a bad school. It doesn’t make our students less intelligent than anybody else and our teachers in many cases are better than other teachers in other districts.”
Franklin Police and Fire High School and Phoenix Union Bioscience High School received A’s and Phoenix Coding Academy and Metro Tech High School received B’s. North and Central high schools were given a C and a D, respectively, according to data from the board of education.
Metro Tech High School was seven points away from an A. But the principal of the school Bryan Reynoso said he hopes that the community can see past the grade.
“We have so many great schools, but this letter grade can be demanding,” he said. “Whatever we can do as a district to highlight who we really are and that this is just a grade will reflect a part of (how) we are truly doing.”
The formula that determines the grade measures five different components – proficiency on the 2018 AzMERIT state assessments, student growth on those assessments from the previous year, the school’s graduation rate, a College and Career Ready Index, and English Language Learners (ELL) standards, according to a press release.
Each component area is worth a certain percentage of the letter grade. Proficiency comprises of 30 percent of the total, ELL is 10 percent and the remaining components are each worth 20 percent, according to the release. Schools are able to obtain up to a 3 percent bonus depending on student proficiency on the AIMS science test.
The schools’ graduation rate is one part of the formula that is difficult to manage every year. Pletenik said that many schools lose points when it comes to the graduation rate.
“If you are not improving by 2 percent every year, you are going to get deducted for that, even though your graduation rate may be much higher than another school’s graduation rate,” he said.
Another difficult part of the formula to manage is the AzMERIT state test. Reynoso said he believes that changing how much the state assessment is worth in the formula would be beneficial to the district.
“We want to get the test to match what students know. This test isn’t doing that, and yet there is so much weight on this,” he said. “The test is worth 60 points out of the 100. If (the district) could advocate for that becoming only 40 points and push for more of the graduation rate, ESL and College Career Readiness to weigh more, that would be great.”
The formula that determines the letter grade can be changed every year, according to Pletenik. This year, the College and Career Ready Index was changed so that all seniors were counted instead of only graduating seniors.
The Arizona Board of Education did not adopt new cut scores that align to the changes in data, according to the news release. But Pletenik said that if the Board of Education did adopt the new cut scores, PUHSD would have had different results.
“We did try to advocate for a change in the cut scores this year because we knew it was going to impact some of our schools,” Pletenik said. “Had they changed the cut scores to reflect the changes in the College and Career Ready Index, none of our schools would have been D schools.”
The district has been able to help schools with their grades in the past. The first year Metro Tech was scored, the high school was one point away from a B.
“The district is amazing at getting us data,” Reynoso said. “They work really hard. (That year) the district went back and found scores to get us to a B. Their commitment to making sure all of our schools show the top score they are supposed to be is phenomenal.”
With the help of the district, and the dedicated staff and students of the district’s high schools, Reynoso said he believes that every school has the chance to improve their letter grades for next year.
“I think it is a team effort to get us to an A and I know whatever we need to do, whether if we’re lacking funding or personal support, all we have to do is go to the district and they will help,” he said. “Because if one of us can do it, then all of us can do it.”
Contact the reporter at ldiethel@asu.edu.
Lisa Diethelm is the Politics editor for the Downtown Devil while she studies at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in downtown Phoenix. She grew up in California and started her journalism career in high school.
