State Board Approves School, District Performance Grades for 2017-18 School Year
The Mississippi State Board of Education (SBE) approved letter grades for schools and districts based on Mississippi’s A-F accountability system that evaluates how schools and districts performed in the 2017-18 school year.
Twenty-nine districts increased their letter grades from the previous school year, and the number of schools earning an A rose from 114 in 2016-17 to 181 in
2017-18.
Accountability grades are based, in part, on how well students perform and progress from year to year on the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) tests for English language arts (ELA) and Mathematics. These tests are aligned to the Mississippi College and Career Ready Standards and are administered annually to students in grades 3-8 and in high school. Overall, students showed statistically significant gains in both ELA and Mathematics from 2016-17 to 2017-18.
Dr. Jason Dean, SBE chair said, “The 2017-18 accountability grades reflect the hard work that our teachers and school leaders do each day on behalf of their students. Mississippi students have achieved unprecedented outcomes in recent years, and these grades prove they can meet, and exceed, high expectations.”
Along with the release of accountability grades, the MDE launched the new Mississippi Succeeds Report Card, an interactive online tool designed to help parents and communities more easily evaluate schools across the state. The tool includes detailed information about each school and district’s academic performance and new indicators of school performance including chronic absenteeism rates and teacher qualifications.
Locally, Pearl River County, Poplarville, and Hancock all received overall district grades of B while Picayune received a C for the district grade.
Based on the grades released, Picayune's South Side Lower Elementary appears to be the most improved going from a D to A grade.
Below are the grades per school in the four area districts.
The statewide district grade comparison from 2016-17 to 2017-18 is as follows:
The accountability system places an emphasis on the progress students make in ELA and Mathematics from year to year, particularly the lowest performing 25 percent of students, and factors in how well students perform on science tests in grades 5 and 8. Accountability grades for high schools and districts include the four-year graduation rate, student performance on Biology, U.S. History and ACT tests, and student participation and performance in advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement and dual credit/dual enrollment courses.
All details of the data released can be found online at https://msrc.mdek12.org/
