Mississippi’s Board of Education delays school accountability scores

Coast schools planning on celebrating their 2018 accountability letter grade scores are going to want to hold off on the congratulations.

The Mississippi Department of Education was initially going to release the 2018 accountability scores at noon Thursday, but the official scores will not be ready until October.

In an email sent Thursday morning, MDE said “the Mississippi State Board of Education voted today to delay until October consideration of approval of letter grades for the 2017-18 school year for schools and districts based on Mississippi’s A-F accountability system.”

Under the current accountability methodology, school districts receive a letter of A, B, C, D or F. The top two grades receive additional funding and lower-scoring schools receive additional assistance and materials.

In August, the board voted to establish a temporary rule to reset the baseline scores for schools that have a 12th grade. The reset would address the lack of comparability to growth scores in prior years, according to the MDE.

The education board will vote Thursday whether to make this temporary rule permanent.

The accountability scores for elementary and middle schools are based on seven criteria at 100 points per subject, with 700 points being the maximum score. High school are scored at point of up to 50 and up to 100 for a maximum score of 1,000 points.

This story was originally published September 20, 2018 at 2:14 PM.