Four superintendents slam "school grade" system

Four southeastern New Mexico school superintendents told legislators here Thursday they are often baffled and frustrated by the grades their schools receive in state assessments of students’ standardized test results.

“The target just needs to quit moving,” said Clovis superintendent Jody Balch. “Let us understand the scale and keep it there.”

The four administrators made their case for greater clarity in state grading of public school performance in wide-ranging discussion during a joint appearance before the Legislative Finance Committee, which met this week in Ruidoso.

Ruidoso superintendent George Bickert told the committee that much of the confusion seems to arise from a formula the state uses in its school evaluations called the “value added model,” or VAM, which he said accounts for 25 percent of a school’s grade from the state Public Education Department.

“It includes a variety of factors,” he said. “But when we ask PED what they are we’re not getting clear and specific answers.”

PED has said that the VAM formula provides a uniform way to measure not only present student performance but also the impact of the school in raising each student’s achievement from an earlier starting point.

But Bickert said the formula’s “secret sauce” often produces results that make no sense.

“How is it possible that ALL 73 third grade students at White Mountain Elementary, who scored ‘proficient’, received correspondent Reading VAM scores that were negative?” he asked in his prepared remarks. “How is it possible that three ‘advanced’ students received negative VAM scores? I never got an answer from PED.”

“The volatility of these grades is causing consternation among all of us,” said Hobbs superintendent TJ Parks.

“I had a lot of upset teachers when one of our schools went from C to F,” said Roswell superintendent Tom Burris. “It was a challenge to pump them back up.”

Parks said he was grateful that in Hobbs “the community does not put faith in the letter grade. Parents see our relationships with their kids as more important.” He said parents still gladly enroll their kids in schools they know have been graded F.

The superintendents appeared to get a sympathetic hearing from the legislators, some of whom were already familiar with the dismay that often follows issuance of school grades.

Democratic Sen. Howie Morales of Silver City said a parent in his district had just lost a custody battle with a former spouse because the New Mexico school attended by the child had a lower state grade than the spouse’s neighborhood school in Arizona.

“That’s the impact that we can have,” he said. He added that the local real estate market, family move decisions and the attractiveness of a school district to potential new businesses can all be powerfully affected by school grades that nobody seems to understand very well.

The superintendents also described their challenges in the areas of school finance, teacher recruitment and retention, and the impact of poverty on overall school performance, in some cases so severe that there are students who miss half their school days.

Asked what measures would make the biggest difference in the New Mexico’s low ranking in education among the states, Burris said keeping students in school.

“We need them to be there,” he said. “Get our kids to school. Get them fed.”

Bickert challenged the committee to consider an idea that hasn’t been tried anywhere else: enrolling three-year-olds in pre-K classes.

“What if we made a commitment to even earlier ‘early education,’” he asked. “Let’s get into the education business even sooner.”