Phoenix (Jan. 17, 2019) – The State of Arizona has issued final school letter grades for 2017-18, finding nearly 4 in 10 public charter schools earned an “A” grade and almost 7 in 10 received an “A” or “B” grade. For the sake of comparison, 1 in 4 district schools received an “A,” and just over half got an “A” or “B” grade.
State-issued A-F school grades were initially made public in October 2018. Final performance scores now announced come following a multi-month appeals process in which letter grades were amended for 25 schools statewide. The latest charter performance scores for 2017-18 represent an improvement over 2016-17, when 66 percent of public charter schools earned an “A” or “B” grade.
“Nearly 70 percent of Arizona public charter schools received an ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade in the last year, which speaks to the widespread quality of the charter sector across our state,” said Ildiko Laczko-Kerr, Chief Academic Officer for the Arizona Charter Schools Association. “We’re fortunate to live in a state in which parents are empowered to take these letter grades and other factors into account when determining what school is the best fit for their child.”
The State of Arizona instituted an “A-F” rating system for schools in order to give parents and families an easy-to-understand guide about the relative performance of public schools across the state. Most of an individual school’s letter grade is based on the performance of its students taking the AzMERIT assessment, though scores are also impacted by other factors that include student absenteeism rates and more.
