Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Accountability topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
District staff brief board on new state K–12 accountability system; attendance and SSIs emphasized
Summary
District administrators told the Centerville‑Abington board the state’s new K–12 accountability framework emphasizes attendance and Student Success Indicators (SSIs), while calculations will be performed externally by a vendor and some score mechanics remain unclear.
A district administrator briefed the Centerville‑Abington board on a major change in Indiana’s K–12 accountability system and described how the new model will affect school grades and local practice.
"We do not have answers to simply because the DOE can't tell us how it works," the administrator said, describing uncertainty about the external calculations and the contractor that will compute final grades. The official explained the state has designated a "year zero" during which grades will be reported but not counted in the final adjustment, and that the initial A grade range will be 85–100 percent before the scale tightens over the next two years.
The administrator outlined the system’s two main components for each student: Academic Mastery (primarily test scores) and Student Success Indicators (SSIs), which act as substantial bonus points in many cases. SSIs cited in the presentation include attendance (a 94% threshold tied to a 10‑day rule), academic growth, passing social‑studies and science assessments, completion of seventh‑grade graduation planning, earning CTE/dual/AP credits, work‑based learning hours and college credits. The presenter warned that a single SSI can sometimes raise a student’s computed grade by multiple percentage points depending on the category.
Board members and staff discussed operational impacts: more frequent data uploads by student (not just school‑level), the need for new attendance tracking under the updated handbook language, and curriculum/scheduling implications (for example, earlier completion or doubling‑up on courses to recover credits). The administrator said local staff attended multiple trainings and had already implemented several policy and practice changes to address attendance and pathways to earn SSIs.
Concerns noted included the district’s reliance on monthly or more frequent uploads to the state and lack of transparency about some calculation details. The administrator said the district expects to receive a preliminary grade in October or November for the year‑zero reporting.
Next steps: staff will continue implementing handbook changes, refine data uploads, and return with updates when state calculations are released.
