Schools Should Receive Delayed A-F Grades By January
State Board of Education members discuss the updated timeline for schools to receive this year’s A-F grades. (Photo Credit: Claire McInerny/StateImpact Indiana)
After learning from testing vendor CTB last month that ISTEP+ scores wouldn’t be released on time, the Department of Education told the State Board of Education Wednesday that schools should receive their grades by Jan. 18, rather than the fall when grades are typically issued.
Not releasing A-F grades on time creates a domino effect for other things like whether a school is classified as a priority or focus school and when teachers would receive performance bonus pay.
The IDOE is also working with the federal government to make sure they comply with federal requirements for reporting low performance school data.
(Read more about the A-F delay and its implications here.)
The tentative Jan. 18 release of grades will create a very tight deadline for schools to issue bonuses based on teacher evaluations, before the Jan. 31 deadline for those bonuses. These bonuses are issued in part based on student ISTEP+ scores as well as evaluations conducted by the school.
IDOE spokesperson Daniel Altman says the department is pushing CTB to expedite the scores as quickly as they can.
“We’re dealing with a delay from CTB that was outside of our control,” Altman says, “We’ve been working significantly with state board staff, legislative staff to get the timeline as reduced as it could be and we’re going to get information to schools as soon as possible.”
