The Oklahoma Dept. of Education’s new tool to assess schools includes overall letter grades as well as a variety of other measures, which were developed to comply with federal law. These letter grades were released in February and are calculated using data from the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years.

Academic achievement measures students who are meeting their specific goals and those reaching proficiency. It’s based on the state tests given to third- through eighth-graders each spring or ACT/SAT scores for high-school students.

Academic growth measures how well students are progressing toward grade-level standards and is calculated by comparing 2018 test scores to 2017 scores.

English Language Proficiency measures the progress of English learners within a school, and is only reported for schools with English language learners.

Chronic Absenteeism is based on the number of students in good attendance – defined as missing less than 10 percent of the school year for any reason.

The Postsecondary Opportunities measure is based on the percentage of high school juniors and seniors who completed college prep coursework, an internship, or concurrent enrollment.

For more information, see the Education Department’s fact sheets and Oklahoma Watch Q&A with state Superintendent of Instruction Joy Hofmeister.

The state report cards may be found at Oklahoma Watch here and www.oklaschools.com here.