Despite expectations, Indiana A-F accountability grades will not be made public this month. The State Board of Education planned to release the grades during their meeting Wednesday, but board members voted instead to hold off until their next meeting in November.
Prior to discussing release of the grades, the board heard from five schools that wanted to appeal their 2014 A-F scores.
Among them was Guerin Catholic High School in Carmel. A Guerin official told the board that some of the data for their International Baccalaureate program was missing, affecting their final grade. This same error affected four additional schools as well.
Discussion of this appeal and others led multiple board members to express concern that calculation errors for any school would compromise the quality of all of the grades, and the board’s own integrity in supporting them.
State Superintendent Glenda Ritz was among those who voted to table the release of the grades. She says it’s crucial that the information be correct before it’s made public.
"That’s the whole point of the appeal process," says Ritz, "is to make sure that we’re finding any kind of errors that there might be so that we can get those corrected and adjusted."
Board members hope they can release final grades at their next meeting November 5th pending review by the Department of Education and the Legislative Service Agency.