Georgia’s School Climate Star Ratings mix data with perception

The School Climate Star Ratings might come off as a simple, five-star system, but the formula behind it is much more complex than that.

Scores came out for the 2014-15 school year last week, with 20 of 39 Bibb County schools showing improvement from 2013-14 of at least one “star” on the scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best possible score. That total of 39 schools does not include the Academy of Classical Education or any other schools that opened after the 2013-14 school year.

Eight schools in the district — ACE, Alexander II Magnet, Heard Elementary, Heritage Elementary, Howard Middle, Skyview Elementary, Springdale Elementary and Vineville Academy of the Arts — notched 4-star ratings.

“I am excited about the improvements in our School Climate Star Ratings,” Superintendent Curtis Jones said in a news release. “Moving forward, I believe our focus on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, student and staff attendance, and safety and security enhancements through cameras in the classroom will have an even greater impact on our School Climate Star Ratings.”

Several Bibb schools also notched 1-star ratings, but only Ballard-Hudson Middle School, Northeast High School, Riley Elementary School and Hartley Elementary School remain open after recent consolidations.

The ratings are determined through a combination of four equal parts — surveys of parents, students and teachers; discipline data; substance-abuse data and survey results; and attendance. That combination of hard data and survey results creates a broader picture of what’s going on in public schools, said Jeff Hodges, who works in the policy division at the Georgia Department of Education.

“It’s not only perceptions, it’s data,” he said.

There are also controls in place to make sure the surveys themselves are not compromised since online surveys can be tricky to monitor. For concerns of anonymity and to cut down on administrative needs, there are no passwords for parents to take the survey, but Hodges said there were employees at the education department tasked with keeping an eye on survey responses.

“If there are multiple surveys from the same IP address ... we know someone is trying to game the system,” he said.

If that address happened to coincide with a school, state officials would contact that school to make sure it wasn’t some sort of effort by the school to get more parents involved at a centralized location, Hodges said.

That doesn’t account for the potential of people who aren’t parents filling out the surveys or that a community member might set up a computer for other families to use. Still, Tony Jones, director of research, evaluation, assessment and accountability for Bibb County schools, said that the district was still interested in the data.

“Honestly, it tells us what our stakeholder perception is of our schools,” Jones said.

He also was encouraged about the upward trend of so many of Bibb County’s schools.

“I think we saw movement in the right direction,” Jones said.

Similar controls were in place for student surveys regarding alcohol and drug abuse among the student body at each school. Hodges said the surveys had questions built in to make sure student responses stay consistent and to eliminate observation bias from skewing the results, meaning students may have all seen the same few classmates abusing drugs.

Another portion of the final climate rating is based on discipline data from the schools. While there may be concerns that rewarding schools for lower referral numbers would cause teachers not to report incidents that should be handled by administrators, Jamie Cassady — Bibb County’s assistant superintendent for student affairs — said he didn’t expect that would be the case.

He said the district’s educators weren’t encouraged to do that and such a practice would go against basic classroom management psychology.

“You want to establish a learning environment where learning takes place,” Cassady said, noting such an environment requires the removal of disruptive behavior.

The final piece of the climate rating puzzle is attendance. While missing class is a problem in itself, Hodges said the greater concern with regard to school climate was the reason behind students missing class without an illness or other excused illness.

Also, attendance issues could be linked to the other areas, like school safety or drug and alcohol use, he said.

“If students are not coming to school, there’s a reason for it,” he said.

Other Middle Georgia districts also received their results, and the ratings were mixed. Crawford County schools picked up ratings of 2 or 3, and Houston County schools ranged from a 1 for Pearl Stephens Elementary to 5s for Lake Joy Primary and Feagin Mill Middle. Jones County got mostly 5s, with Mattie Wells Elementary, Gray Station Middle, Turner Woods Elementary, Dames Ferry Elementary and Gray Elementary all taking that top score.

Monroe County’s T.G. Scott and Katherine B. Sutton elementary schools also picked up 5s, while Peach County Schools all notched scores of 3 or 4. Twiggs County schools rounded out the midstate results with scores ranging from 2 to 4.

This story was originally published June 5, 2016 at 9:21 PM with the headline "Georgia’s School Climate Star Ratings mix data with perception."