District reports higher accountability scores under new state test baseline

Doctor Garmi, the district’s presenter on accountability results, told the board the district showed increases across its schools after the state rolled out a redesigned assessment and new cut scores. She said the state’s changes mean this year should be treated as a baseline and warned against direct year-to-year comparisons.

"Students were assessed on new English and math standards for the first time," Doctor Garmi said, adding that "new cut scores were established" and that the state advised districts not to compare achievement directly with prior years.

Garmi walked the board through enrollment and attendance trends, saying K–12 enrollment has risen since 2017 and that attendance has held near 95 percent. She described how the state’s accountability “pie” allocates points across measures including student growth, engagement (a climate survey), achievement proficiency and English-learner proficiency (the district has too few EL students to count that measure).

Board members pressed on two recurring limitations in the data: small cohort sizes at the high school level and the fact that some grades are not tested every year. Garmi said single-grade cohorts can cause large swings in scores and noted that, for high school, only tenth grade test results drive the academic achievement measure.

On student engagement, Garmi said the district scored roughly 57 percent “committed,” 32 percent “compliant,” and 12 percent “disengaged” on the survey instrument. She also noted some published charts contained minor errors she would correct before final upload.

The presentation closed with an invitation for board members to request a deeper, standard-by-standard breakdown from the state reports or to receive the 14‑page methodology document the state uses to compute the accountability scores.