After nearly four years of development following the December 2015 passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Kentucky’s new five-star accountability system for public schools is now live. Both Daviess County Public Schools and Owensboro Public Schools received three stars for a majority of their schools, on target with 50 percent of schools across the Commonwealth.
“While every organization, including schools, need a benchmark of progress and where we are and where we need to go, we want to caution the community that this five-star rating should not be seen like a Yelp five-star rating,” said Dr. Matthew Constant, chief academic officer at OPS. “It should not be seen necessarily as a level of quality.”
OPS received three stars for overall elementary and middle school accountability scores, but Owensboro High School, Cravens Elementary and Estes Elementary were three of 251 Kentucky schools to receive two stars.
Constant said the district was proud of Sutton Elementary’s four-star rating, one of the very few in the region to achieve at that level.
“We do see a range in our schools from two to four stars,” Constant said. “It gives us a starting point, as long as the system doesn’t change.”
Constant said OPS has struggled in the past because of changes in school accountability structure from the state.
“We can’t go back and compare this to any results, because they are totally different from here moving forward,” he said.
Constant said despite the changes in school accountability measurement, OPS can still compare novice, apprentice, proficient and distinguished ratings in math and reading.
“For the most part, those haven’t changed in terms of measurability,” he said. “We can look at patterns and trends across those areas.”
OPS serves a lot of kids in significant gap areas, like special education and English language learners. Each one of those gap groups, Constant said, are measured and a school’s star rating can be lowered if it does not make enough progress.
“We did not get lowered at OPS because of any significant gaps in any of our schools,” Constant said. “We see that as a win, as an opportunity for celebration.”
While OPS does not have significant gaps, Constant said the district does still have gaps in its population, which they attribute to transiency. Constant said 40 percent of the students at Cravens Elementary School shift during the school year and Estes Elementary faces a similar situation.
“When you have that large of a population change from the beginning of school to the end of school, it’s difficult to gauge where the kids come in and get them where they need to go,” he said.
DCPS Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Jana Beth Francis echoed the same caution for DCPS parents looking at the school report card data.
“What is really important to remember is that we need to look beyond the stars,” she said. “When you first look at the star system, it first appears to be a very simple way to classify schools, but there are lots of different ways you might end up at a three-star. You can have a lot of different combinations of what can make a school land at one star level or not.”
Francis said that 14 DCPS schools received three-star ratings and three schools — Apollo High School, Burns Middle School and Meadow Lands Elementary School — received two stars.
Francis said that Daviess County Middle school was given a four-star rating, but was lowered to three stars due to a significant gap in students with disabilities. While a few DCPS schools had significant gaps, a rating can only be lowered with schools at four or five stars, Francis said.
With 50.5 percent of schools across the state coming in at three stars, Francis said, DCPS is in line with a majority of the state.
“We want to continue to see our schools improve their academics and the star system will become one metric to show us that,” she said.
Francis said she found affirmation in DCPS’ emphasis on math and reading curriculum after finding a majority of the district’s schools scored at the “high” level in these areas.
“Obviously, I’d like to see that high performance bleed over to science, social studies and writing,” she said.
Francis said DCPS just bought new science curriculum for grades 3 through 5 and the district will incorporate new social studies standards this year.
Transition ready students, those high schoolers that meet academic or career readiness, was low for DCPS, something that Francis said district officials will take a close look at.
Both school systems recommend that parents review the school report card data, but understand that the new five-star accountability system is just one metric for a school’s performance.
The system can be viewed in the form of an online dashboard on the Kentucky School Report Card, where reports for each school and district will show graphics displaying the overall identification of one to five stars, federal classifications, the performance on indicators (from very low to very high), and any statistically significant achievement gaps.
