As ILEA rethinks Indianapolis education, some call for new school ratings

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It’s been seven years since Indianapolis schools, and schools around the state, have received a rating for school performance.

In that time, dozens of charters have closed, opened, or taken control of IPS schools. Indianapolis Public Schools, where enrollment is declining, has also closed several schools.

Now, the state has created the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance to rethink the Indianapolis school landscape. And while supporters of charters and IPS schools want different things from the ILEA, one idea has garnered support from both sides: the need for a universal accountability system.

That system could highlight schools in need of intervention, advocates say, and provide important information to parents as they select schools for their children. And in a school landscape that had thousands more seats than students last school year, it could also influence which schools close or merge.

What that rating system would look like — and whether it would simply mirror the state’s new A-F school ratings system to be finalized in December — is unclear. But it could also help clarify which schools are better serving students, during a period when finger-pointing between advocates of traditional public schools and charters has sometimes gotten ugly. A universal rating system could put all schools on the same playing field.

If the ILEA recommends creating such a system to the state legislature, there will be big questions about what it should look like. How should it account for demographics? What should it measure?

The ILEA is due to share its recommendations on how charters and IPS can share transportation and building resources to lawmakers by the end of December. But the law that established the group also allows it to make recommendations on “uniform school performance frameworks” — which member Barato Britt said the group is considering.

“There is at least mutual agreement that trying to get to a framework that does evaluate and hold all of our public schools to similar levels of accountability for performance is, I think, a north star,” he said.

Controlling for school demographics in ratings is complex

Designing a universal accountability system would be a tall order.

There would be thorny questions of who would choose the metrics, and whether those metrics would culminate in a single school rating. There would also be questions about whether those ratings would lead to consequences, like closure recommendations, and what power the district or charter authorizers would be giving up in the process.

One overarching challenge would be how to design a system that fairly controls for differences in demographics and the challenges faced by each school.

Consider two Indianapolis charter schools.

At Liberty Grove at Elder Diggs School 42, all students qualified for free or reduced-price meals, one measure of family income, according to state enrollment records from last school year. About 16% were English language learners. Just 4.5% of its students reached proficiency in both English and math on the state’s ILEARN exam last year.

Two miles away at Herron Prep, roughly 36% receive free or reduced-price meals. Just 5% of students were English language learners. Its combined proficiency rate: roughly 39%.

So what is a fair way to rate these schools that accounts for their different demographics without downplaying academic results?

There are at least three ways that a school rating model can account for those differences, said Chris Domaleski, executive director of the Center for Assessment, which provides support for districts on assessment and accountability.

One is by measuring growth on test scores rather than total proficiency. This can measure a school based on how well its students are progressing year over year, rather than judging a school that historically lags behind its peers based on overall proficiency.

Another strategy is to factor in the performance of student subgroups, he said, such as those from low-income backgrounds. That could also measure how well schools are doing in serving certain populations, rather than judging the school’s performance as a whole.

Finally, a framework can also look at measure improvements over time in non-academic areas, such as chronic absenteeism.

Any rating system should focus on the success of each student subgroup to ensure schools are serving all types of students, said Jasmin Shaheed-Young, the CEO of RISE Indy, a nonprofit with ties to school choice advocates that works in district and charter schools. In the same vein, it should also take into account suspension and expulsion rates, she said.

But a new framework should not immediately dictate which schools would close, she said.

“Before we go directly to closure, we want to stop to figure out intervention, and we also want partnership,” she said. “We want all schools to be able to work together to ultimately serve best practices and consolidate ideas.”

For Morrise Harbour, founder of the Liberty Grove charter school, year-over-year improvement on a test is a more important metric on his school’s success, rather than raw scores alone.

“Comparing yourself to yourself is probably the best — one of the more efficient — ways to really see how effective a school is,” he said.

To him, other important metrics include attendance rate and the retention of students and staff. But what’s less clear to him is how important each of these factors might be in determining a final school rating.

“What weighs more in this report card as opposed to others?” he said. “Does attendance weigh more than proficiency, or does growth weigh more than proficiency?”

Could Indianapolis schools adopt a state rating system?

The state’s previous school ratings measured the number of students passing state assessments, year-over-year growth on state tests, graduation rates, and the number of students taking college-level courses.

The new state school rating system, which the State Board of Education will finalize in December, could be more comprehensive. It would give schools points for elementary school students who are not proficient on a state exam but are approaching proficiency, for example. It would grant extra points for students who meet attendance targets, or for English language learners who are reaching language proficiency.

In high school, the proposed new system would also give extra points for students who complete college and career coursework or 150 hours of work-based learning.

But Shaheed-Young said Indianapolis should have its own framework that considers student subgroup performance, given the diversity of student enrollment in IPS and charters.

Britt, the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance member, said he believes the community can agree on a common set of data points that will provide “as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as possible.”

“I just have to believe there is a way we can evaluate schools equitably, meaningfully, and in a way that will … further inform parents in their decision-making,” he said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.