The Commission of School Accreditation voted on Nov. 18 to adopt recommended A–F performance-level cuts that will take effect for the 2025–26 Mississippi Statewide Accountability System.

Chair Pamela Manners called the special meeting and introduced Mr. Al Burrow, who presented the standard-setting process used to produce the recommendations. Burrow told commissioners the Center for Assessment facilitated two standard-setting meetings — Sept. 9 and Oct. 13 — and that the committee included representatives from the Legislature, the governor’s office, superintendents and district accountability staff. He said the group used a hybrid approach, combining norm-referenced and criterion-referenced methods, to test how different cut points would change the distribution of letter grades.

"We wanted to use this year's data, because we wanted to get as far as out from pandemic impacts as possible and get as clean the data as possible to use some standard setting," Burrow said, summarizing the committee’s aim to reflect current performance while reducing pandemic-era distortions.

Burrow explained the role of Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs): they provide prototypical profiles that map composite accountability scores to letter grades. He summarized the PLD characteristics the committee used — for example, an A recognizes high proficiency and growth across student groups, while a D indicates unsatisfactory performance and low rates of growth — and showed a tool that allowed committee members to preview how different cuts would change the percentage of schools receiving each letter grade. He also said school and district names were masked in committee deliberations so members could assess distributions without identifiable information.

Commissioner John Mark Cain asked whether meeting or falling below the 65% threshold in future results would trigger another reset. Cain asked, "if the outcome data puts us above that 65% again, are we looking at a another forced resetting with the current lanes?" Burrow replied that the committee discussed that possibility and that state law prescribes resetting when the threshold is met, calling it "a good problem to have" if statewide improvement produced that circumstance.

After the presentation and brief questions, the commission took formal action. The chair asked for a motion to approve "the recommended A through F performance level cuts for schools and districts as established in the Mississippi Statewide Accountability System effective with the 2025-26 school year in accordance with Mississippi Code Annotated 37-17-65." The transcript records 'Carla Evers' moving the approval and 'Judge Cotton' seconding. Commissioners voted in favor and the motion carried.

The commission’s staff will run the accountability system using last year’s data and the newly adopted cuts and provide schools and districts with the letter-grade results under the updated standards, as described in Burrow’s presentation. The meeting adjourned at 8:51 a.m.; the chair noted a meeting is expected in early December.

Note on transcript name variants: the meeting transcript contains inconsistent spellings for one or more commissioners (appearing as "Carla Edwards," "Carla Evers," and "Dr. Carla Evans" in different segments). The article reports actions and attributions using the exact names as they appear at the points of motion and attendance in the official recording segments.