Earlier this month, the Mississippi State School Board approved a new accountability rating system that gives top schools a "Star School" rating among its seven levels, instead of the previous numbered ratings of "Level 1" for the lowest scoring schools, to "Level 5" for the highest scoring.
The new ranks, from highest to lowest, are Star School, High Performing, Successful, Academic Watch, Low Performing, At-risk of Failing, and Failing. Schools will get their first rating under the system this fall, which factors graduation rates in addition to students' test scores.
State Superintendent Hank Bounds indicated in a March 23 statement that the board will raise the bar for the highest rating over the next four years. The new system will make the highest rating more difficult to achieve while putting Mississippi's best schools on a par with the best schools nationwide. With the previous system, students at Level 5 schools in the Magnolia State did not achieve the test scores of top students in the country, putting them behind on a national level, according to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
Mississippi has been revising its state tests to be more vigorous, requiring greater knowledge and more analysis from students.
"It's not just rote memorization," Aberdeen Schools Superintendent George Gilreath told the Journal.
Read more about the new rating system on the Mississippi Department of Education Web site.
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