The Office of School and District Performance produces annual school and district grades based on an A-F accountability or grading system. An accountability system defines and measures what matters: overall student performance and progress, with extra focus on struggling students, and graduation rates and college and career readiness in high school.
The A-F grading scale works by holding all schools to the same high expectations and clearly communicating the results to parents. Mississippi’s school grading system considers several indicators, including how well students perform on state tests, whether students are showing improvement on those tests from year to year and whether students are graduating within four years. The system also factors in how well schools are helping their lowest achieving students and English learners make progress toward proficiency.
History and Goal:
The Mississippi Legislature passed legislation in 2013 that required the state to implement an A-F grading scale for schools based on the following criteria:
- Student Achievement: the percent of students proficient and advanced on the current state assessments
- Individual Student Growth: the percent of students making one year's progress in one year’s time on the state assessment, with an emphasis on the progress of the lowest 25 percent of students in the school or district
- The goal is to help parents and the public better understand how well a school is performing and to begin conversations to continually improve education.
What the Grades Represent:
- How well students are performing in math and English language arts on state assessments.
- Whether students in the school are meeting annual expected growth in math and English language arts.
- How well students are performing in U.S. History and Science
- Whether high school students are graduating on time.
- Whether students are participating in and performing well in accelerated coursework, such as Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, and dual credit college courses.
- How students perform on the ACT
- Whether there are large differences between the achievement levels among students, especially students who receive additional educational services.
- Whether a school is performing above expectations.
What the Grades Are Not:
- They do not measure how well an individual student or teacher is doing.
- They do not take into consideration other things the school may be doing well, such as meeting students’ emotional/social or health needs or how well students are performing in other subject areas.