UC Schools Want State To Simplify Metrics

Schools Directors from across the Upper Cumberland concerned about the massive amount of educational data coming from the state.

White County Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said families and educators are feeling overwhelmed by the various achievement measures, growth numbers, and school letter grades constantly being released. Dronebarger said a large part of the problem is that there are different metrics coming out at different times over the course of a year.

“It’s just every two months it seems like there’s another roll out of data,” Dronebarger said. “And right now, by the time we get the data it’s November on last year’s data from testing and we can’t really use it on this year’s current students. And especially at the high school level where they graduate a class at December and then switch.”

Overton County Director of Schools Donnie Holman said it is especially difficult to keep the various data straight because many statistics are measured differently, such as some scales that range from one to four and others from one to five. Holman said the system is constantly being reviewed and adjusted by the state but fixing the whole system is such a big undertaking.

“I think the state listens and wants our input and I think they want to do the best they can,” Holman said. “But it’s just difficult. It’s not really anything that us or our school board could deal with, could assist with other than possibly just sharing input.”

Dronebarger said state officials at the meeting took the issue into advisement and will explore options to release these figures in more unified groups each year. Dronebarger said one of the challenges with this solution is determining when state testing has to occur each year to get the data back.

“One of the problems is that school calendars are different across the state,” Dronebarger said. “So where we may start at the first of August, end in middle of May, another school may be off by as much as three to four weeks from that timetable. So it makes it difficult for the data roll outs to be all the same. So that’s where the conversation led, was the state department would love to see one calendar, school calendar for the state but that’s very unlikely to happen.”

Dronebarger said school letter grades were supposed to be a single metric that parents can rely on to understand their local schools but that system failed to encapsulate everything going on in each school.

“We’re all about accountability but schools have a whole lot of it, public schools have a whole lot of it,” Dronebarger said. “And they’re just making it harder and harder for the public to understand. I think it makes it confusing, it makes it hard for parents to know where they are.”