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Mississippi task force highlights NAEP gains, urges ACT–SAT concordance in college‑and‑career index
Summary
Task force members praised Mississippi’s NAEP gains and asked the Department of Education to align ACT and SAT thresholds for the college-and-career readiness index; staff said concordance tables will be used and that superscore values should match SAT rigor before final approval.
Chair Chris Topolasco, who coordinates the Accountability Task Force for the Center for Assessment, opened Friday’s meeting by flagging federal assessment results and state indexes as the day’s priorities.
In a presentation to the group, Alan Burrow, associate superintendent for district school performance at MDE, reviewed national and state figures from the 2013–2024 NAEP series and said Mississippi showed relative gains while many states declined. "We had some bright spots," Burrow said, noting the state rose to about 10th in fourth‑grade reading and made improvements across multiple subject and grade combinations. Christina Mann, a senior biology fellow participating remotely, added that subgroup breakdowns show Hispanic and low‑income fourth‑grade readers in Mississippi outperform their peers nationally.
Members said the NAEP results provide corroborating evidence that state policies are yielding gains and asked staff to carry that context into accountability rulemaking. Topolasco revisited an earlier task‑force recommendation to use ACT superscores in the college‑and‑career readiness (CCR) index and to align ACT thresholds with SAT cut points. He explained the rationale: "The task force valued parity between ACT and SAT so there's an equal level of rigor for both tests," he said.
Panelists debated step sizes on ACT cut points. One superintendent asked whether the ACT progression (15→17→20, etc.) should use uniform increments; Topolasco and Alan Burrow answered that the group had favored steps that correspond to SAT thresholds and scholarship or military qualifications rather than even numeric increments. Burrow said the department will "make sure those link up appropriately" using the tables ACT and SAT publish.
Why it matters: CCR weighting and assessment choices affect district and school ratings and can change funding and improvement priorities. Task force members asked MDE to provide the ACT–SAT concordance tables and an impact analysis to confirm local effects before adopting any numeric cut.
Next steps: MDE staff committed to aligning superscores with SAT equivalents and to share the concordance and cost/impact data with the task force prior to drafting amendment language for the federal ESSA plan.
