School Grading System Topic of Senate Education Committee Hearing

SCHOOL GRADING SYSTEM TOPIC OF EDUCATION COMMITTEE HEARING

 

Contact: Arnold Vigil
505/986.4263
Arnold.Vigil@nmlegis.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

School Grading System Topic of Senate Education Committee Hearing

Santa Fe — The highly controversial issue of grading public schools on an A-F system based on student test scores will be the primary topic of discussion during the Senate Education Committee (SEC) hearing at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday in Room 311 of the state Capitol.

Members of the Legislative Education Study Committee will present a report to members of the SEC, whose majority of members have long opposed the Public Education Department’s (PED) rating of schools utilizing the complicated system.

In the latest dust to be kicked up by the unpopular grading system, students, parents and teachers at the Corrales Elementary School are actively protesting the “F” grade PED assigned the school in the latest evaluation. The letter grade takes into account the 2014 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) scores. Last March, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Corrales Elementary took the test for the first time

Such is the latest in a long line of complaints about the grading system from communities throughout the state, including the Santa Fe Public Schools, which has also disputed grades assigned to many of its schools by PED. During the 2015 Legislative session, students throughout the state walked out of the PARCC examinations in protest.

“The LESC will present their latest findings on the grading system and I suspect they are going to tell us what we have already known,” said SEC Chairman Senator John Sapien (D-9, Bernalillo & Sandoval). “Many educators and parents throughout the state are very dissatisfied with this grading system based on tests that other states have already tried and scrapped.”

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