The state has invented a complicated calculus to determine whether Georgia schools are safe, secure and welcoming.
The Legislature’s 2013 decision to rate school climate grew out of the sincere concern that students can’t thrive in schools where chaos abounds, bullying runs rampant or the staff plays hooky.
The state’s formula assigns points based on student disciplinary data, the percentage of students who miss 10 or more days of school, absentee rates of staff, and student surveys on drug use, bullying and how dangerous they think their school is. Also considered are parent and teacher perception surveys.
After the information is weighted, schools are assigned stars. A school judged to have an “excellent” climate earns five stars. An “unsatisfactory” climate rates one star. Most Georgia schools fell in the middle. Fifteen percent earned two stars or less.
A few schools with weak academic performance still managed to collect five stars for school climate, which would indicate parents, teachers and students can feel good about a school even if little learning occurs. And some schools with strong achievement received two stars, which would suggest people can be iffy about a school even when the kids are succeeding.
Consider the disparate results in the city schools of Decatur and the DeKalb County schools.
Decatur’s Fifth Avenue Elementary earned only two stars, meaning it was “below satisfactory.” The rest of Decatur’s schools earned three or four stars; none attained five stars. Yet Decatur schools regularly post top academic ratings on the state’s 100-point scale College and Career Ready Performance Index.
For example, the average Georgia high school earned a CCRPI grade of 68. Decatur High earned an 87.1. Yet its climate rating was three stars.
The average Georgia elementary school earned a 72.7. Fifth Avenue scored an 87.9.
DOE spokesman Matt Cardoza said academically strong schools with low climate ratings will suffer if a disparity surfaces in how parents and teachers perceive the school. Decatur’s Fifth Avenue experienced a 10-point gap between how parents and teachers assessed the climate.
In its five-star rating, DeKalb Alternative benefited by a reprieve on participation penalties. This year, schools were not dinged for low participation on the parent, teacher and students surveys. Next year, they will be.
But parents in DeKalb still have to wonder how the DeKalb Alternative School earned the top rating of five stars for school climate, while DeKalb’s Chamblee Charter High School earned three stars.
On the state’s academic rankings, DeKalb Alternative earned a grade of 33.9 on a scale of 100, while Chamblee posted a grade of 79.8. DeKalb Alternative School reported an average daily student attendance of 67.7 percent, while Chamblee showed an average daily student attendance of 95.2 percent.
It is worth noting DeKalb — a system perceived by the Legislature to be full of unhappy students, parents and teachers and in dire need of its intervention — fared well overall on the DOE school climate ratings. Twenty-seven DeKalb’s schools earned five-star ratings. The district leads the state, along with the Forsyth and Gwinnett county schools.
“At the end of the day, it is a school climate survey. Part of it is data, and part of it is perception,” said Cardoza. “If students feel threatened, that is a problem, even if the data doesn’t show there is a problem.”
I have my doubts about the reliability of these climate ratings, especially when there’s an easier and far less complicated way to assess the feel of a school.
Visit it.
