It will be more challenging for Mississippi schools to earn the coveted A rating this year. The Mississippi State Board of Education voted to approve new performance level cuts for the Mississippi Statewide Accountability System during its Nov. 20 board meeting. Changes to the A-F accountability rating will affect the grades assigned to schools for the 2025-2026 school year.
In their Sept. 2024 meeting, the Commission of School Accreditation discussed amending the standards to align with state law, which requires raising the standards when proficiency rates exceed 75% or when 65% of schools or districts earn a grade of “B” or higher. Mississippi schools and districts met this goal in 2023.
“It is essential for states to continually raise expectations to ensure student achievement continues to improve,” State Superintendent of Education Dr. Lance Evans said in an MDE press release on Nov. 20. “The new standards are attainable goals, and as we meet them, we will raise the bar higher. States that do not increase their expectations see declines in student achievement. As Mississippi continues our educational marathon, we need to keep pushing toward higher goals.”
The new performance levels will increase the current cut scores for each accountability grade. The accountability system awards up to 700 points for elementary and middle schools and up to 1,000 for high schools and districts. Elementary and middle schools will now need a score of 457, up from the current 442, to earn an A grade. High schools must now earn 769 points, 15 points more than the current total.
Schools earn points based on several factors, including student proficiency and growth in state-mandated tests, English learner progress toward English proficiency, student performance on the ACT, SAT, ACT WorkKeys and four-year graduation rate.
Parents’ Campaign President Nancy Loome said the new scores account for both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced scoring.
“In prior years, resetting cut scores meant that, in the first year following the reset, the top 10 percent of schools and districts were rated A, the next 27 percent of schools were rated B, the next 25 percent of schools were rated C, the next 24 percent of schools were rated D, and the lowest scoring 14 percent of schools were rated F—regardless of how well or how poorly they performed,” Loome said in a Dec. 4 statement.
Loome said this new system allows schools to know in advance what is required to earn a specific rating and schools will now earn the grade that aligns with the level of proficiency and academic growth achieved.
“The board’s move away from the forced distribution of ratings to the use of criterion referencing (establishing fixed, descriptive definitions of the performance required for each category of A, B, C, D, or F) is something that public school advocates, including The Parents’ Campaign, long have urged. It is a significant victory for public schools that this methodology is now being used to reset cut scores,” Loome said.
During the 2024 discussion, Chief Accountability Officer Dr. Paula Vanderford told the board that the state’s Commission on School Accreditation was considering adding additional components.
“We hope that we will be able to incorporate some work around the (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) and even (Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) program completions, etc., in the future,” Vanderford said on Sept 17, 2024.
The components now include performance on the ASVAB, as well as industry certifications, diploma endorsements and five-year graduates.
MDE noted that grades for the current school year will set a new baseline and cannot be compared with those from previous school years.