Arizona to change how it evaluates schools

A plan to switch how Arizona schools are evaluated by starting to use familiar letter grades is likely to give many schools report-card shock.

The aim of the change is to drive school improvement by making it easier to gauge exactly how well schools are doing. But a new way in which the evaluations will be figured is expected to produce more schools with low rankings.


As a result, the change isn't as simple as just converting the current labels such as "excelling," "highly performing" and "performing" to A, B and C.

"Not every 'excelling' school is going to be an 'A' school," said Robert Franciosi, deputy associate superintendent for research and evaluation, who oversees the Department of Education's school assessments.
Arizona to change how it evaluates schools

Exactly what impact the change will have is yet to be seen and won't be known until the first round of letter-grade rankings come out after this school year.



Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/08/16/20100816arizona-schools-performance-evaluation.html#ixzz0wnFXc0H5

My school became an IB school for the elementary age student. We are on our fifth year of being an Excelling school even though we have a high ELL and Spec. Ed population.