Peasant
On Thursday, the Mississippi State Board of Education voted against officializing letter grades for Mississippi public schools.
The vote was announced abruptly Thursday morning, not long before the embargo on the scores was set to expire. Now the scores are scheduled to be released following the board’s October meeting. Mississippi Department of Education Director of Communications Patrice Guilfoyle said while the scores themselves were not approved, the methodology for them was.
“What they said publicly is they decided to hold off, so they have more time to review the information that was provided,” Guilfoyle said.
Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Superintendent Eddie Peasant said the concerns were primarily at the high school level, and all other grades would likely remain the same. However, he said he had never seen a similar situation in his entire administrative career.
“I’m hoping, first of all, that after the board has had an opportunity to review the information, they will work toward the approval of the recommendations, and in that case, everything would be fine,” Peasant said. “If they decide to do something different, based on my understanding of what their questions are about it, it would only potentially impact our high school.”
Peasant said he was not expecting to see the scores delayed. He said after a meeting of a superintendents’ advisory board he sits on, he was sure the scores would be released as originally planned.
“We had met on Wednesday, and we didn’t see any issues with the grades that had been sent out,” Peasant said. “We were all surprised that it wasn’t approved yesterday.”
He said to his knowledge, the board’s main concern was not having sufficient time to review the results. He said he didn’t expect the scores to be delayed again.
“There may be some discussion about the number of schools assigned to each grade, and the other concern is making another change after there was an adjustment approved last year, and then having another one this year. For the most part, that’s expected in our current situation, because of the different assessments.”
He said up to last year, Mississippi was still using data from different assessments not aligned to the current assessments.
“Even this coming year, we’ll have a new science test,” Peasant said. “There’s potential that there needs to be an adjustment for that.”
He said the district was used to needing to make adjustments due to changes in assessment, and said despite opposition, it was sometimes warranted.
“Some people have looked at it as a moving target,” Peasant said. “I don’t think everyone has a clear understanding of what is actually happening.”