Paradise Valley Schools explain Arizona letter grades and why small score differences can flip a rating
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Summary
District representative Jessica Harrington explains how Arizona assigns school letter grades—built mostly on student growth, proficiency and absenteeism—and warns parents not to over-interpret small score differences. PV reports 53% of schools earned A's and 37% earned B's this year.
Jessica Harrington, speaking for Paradise Valley Unified School District, laid out how Arizona school letter grades are calculated and urged parents to use them as one of several tools when evaluating schools.
"A school letter grade kind of comprehensively measures a bunch of different factors," Harrington said, describing components including student growth, proficiency and chronic absenteeism. She said the state aggregates those point values into a single letter—A, B or C—and that A denotes "excellent" while B denotes "highly performing."
Harrington emphasized growth as the largest single factor for K–8 grades: "Growth makes up 50% of the overall letter grades," she said, explaining the state ranks students against academic peers across years and awards growth points when students gain a year or more of learning.
The district provided two summary figures for this cycle: 53% of PV Schools earned an A and 37% earned a B. "So we are a highly performing district," Harrington said.
Hosts noted that small point differences can move a school from an A to a B. "It could be as much as a tenth of a point," Harrington said, adding that a one-letter change does not necessarily reflect a sudden decline in educational quality but can reflect cohort differences, program mixes or year-to-year variation.
Harrington also cautioned that many parts of a school's program and culture—such as extracurriculars, climate, and specific classroom practices—are not captured by the state test and therefore may not be reflected in the letter grade. She said career and technical education (CTE) is included for high schools but that many other valuable programs fall outside the state testing metrics.
For parents seeking more context, Harrington pointed listeners to the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) website, which hosts detailed school-level reports, and recommended school tours to see curriculum, climate and programs in person.
The district framed the letter grades as one datapoint among many and encouraged families to consider program offerings and year-to-year trends rather than a single letter.