Protect Our Schools Act Sponsor Discusses Star Ranking

A Montgomery County delegate who sponsored the Protect Our Schools Act of 2017 is cautioning state residents to take recently released star ratings for state schools “with a grain of salt.”

Del. Eric Luedtke (D-Montgomery) made the statement on Twitter.

The report cards were released Tuesday. A majority of state schools – 86 percent – earned three, four or five stars in a ranking system. There were 219 five-star schools, and 35 schools in the state earned one star.

In a series of tweets, Luedtke explained why he wouldn’t be among those dwelling on the star rankings:

The State Department of Education has released their first set of school rankings under ESSA and the Protect Our Schools Act. You should take those rankings with a grain of salt. Here’s a thread explaining why:

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

The Protect Our Schools Act was passed in 2017 by the General Assembly to guide the state’s implementation of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. That law, the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act, required states to adopt new accountability measures that extended beyond state standardized test scores. The federal law requires at least one indicator of school quality or student success and, at a state’s discretion, an indicator of student growth.

By including language about assigning schools a percentile rank ― allowing comparison to all other schools in the state ― and barring the state board from using a letter-grade model to rank schools, lawmakers thought they’d thwarted an overly simplistic reporting system. However, the Maryland State Department of Education and Maryland State Board of Education implemented the law with a five-star rating system, a half-step removed from giving schools a grade A through F.

First, a majority of these rankings are still based on standardized test scores. Such scores are a snapshot only, and are an imperfect measure of school quality.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

In fact, the Protect Our Schools Act required that no more than 65% of these rankings be based on test scores. And because some indicators MSDE had planned on using aren’t ready, they’ve actually used tests as more than 65% of the scores.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

In 2017, Maryland lawmakers argued that too much focus on test scores alone was trapping some schools with “failing” labels and overlooking other factors such as student improvement over time and access to a well-rounded curriculum. The law required 35 percent of the overall scores to consider factors like student growth, absenteeism, graduation rates and climate surveys, which would gage the satisfaction of students and teachers in schools. Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) vetoed the legislation, calling it the weakest accountability system in the country and wrote that “the prioritization of these non–academic factors is designed to hide what is really happening in failing schools and is not correlated to student achievement in any way.”

While some of the non-testing factors were included in this year’s accountability scores, the climate surveys are still in a pilot stage and were not included. Other metrics like student performance in science and social studies also weren’t included in the first year of the new accountability system.

Whether they are legally allowed to do that is a question for the lawyers. But the more relevant point for discussing school quality is that once those other indicators are on line, the percentage of these rankings that comes from tests will decline in future rankings.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

Luedtke said too much focus on standardized testing often results in school scores that essentially reflect back a neighborhood’s wealth or poverty.

Second, we know that one of the largest factors in student success on standardized tests is socioeconomic status. There are lots of reasons for this. But here’s just one example from a school I visited recently…

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

The algebra test in high school is taken on computers and has a calculator interface that kids can use for portions of the test. Problem is, the calculator interface is for a graphing calculator. These can cost more than $100, and a lot of low income kids can’t afford them.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

So there are built-in inequities in how we do these assessments. And to some extent the scores will simply reflect which schools have richer or poorer student populations. This is part of the reason Baltimore City has so many 1 and 2 star schools.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

It’s also part of the reason the list of 5 star schools in counties like Montgomery are concentrated in wealthy parts of the county like Potomac and Bethesda.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

Luedtke said factors like the climate survey are important because they will reflect the quality of life in Maryland schools: Is a “high performing” five-star school filled with miserable students and teachers? Are one-star schools creating a vibrant, creative atmosphere for learning and a safe space for students?

Finally (and there are more critiques but this is just a short list) one of the indicators MSDE wasn’t able to use this year are school climate surveys – one of the best measures we have of the non-academic qualities that help make a school ‘good’.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

The surveys measure qualitative issues like perceptions of school safety, staff support for students, and administrative support for staff. They are important. Because schools are more than just testing factories.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

In fact the legislature thought then so important that they are the only indicator we explicitly mandated in the Protect Our Schools Act – though there are other indicators explicitly mandated in federal law.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

So imo the scorecards are not just a snapshot but only a partial snapshot.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

Despite the tweet thread, Luedtke said he thought state education officials did their best on the accountability report, which is largely guided by federal law no matter how many changes the legislature or state board make. Most of his quibbles, Luedtke said, were with the federal mandates in the first place.

“I think [the state] did the best job they could within the bounds of practicality and the law,” Luedtke said Thursday.

All that said, we are required by federal law to do rankings like these. And while I have quibbles with @MdPublicSchools over details, I think they’ve done a decent job under difficult circumstances, given the constraints of law and practicality.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

And im hopeful that as all indicators come online in future years, they will be able to refine the rankings to better reflect a true picture of school quality.

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— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) December 5, 2018

Luedtke said Thursday that he did not think state lawmakers would consider legislation this year to make further changes to the accountability law.

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