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.”