Homestead gets an A for school performance

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - The Indiana Department of Education has released its report card on schools statewide. Some districts improved while others that did well in years past did worse.  These grades are based on performance from last school year.

Fort Wayne Community Schools was one of the districts in the state which got a lower grade on the new scale.  Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, said the new scale is robust compared to the old one .  It includes student proficiency on the state's assessments, graduation rates, and college readiness.

"So, all we are doing is using the most state-of-the-art, up-to-date measurements so that schools can maximize their indicators in terms of getting assessed for their performance," Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett said.

Bennett made a stop at Homestead High School to award them for becoming an A school.

"We were then able to substitute those for the old No Child Left Behind measurements so that schools like Homestead - they're doing great things kids every day - don't get capped at a C."

Southwest Allen County Schools Superintendent, Steve Yager, said the C from two years ago on the old scale challenged the district to work harder.

"What we did was empower our teachers to help us to come up with a curriculum that we needed and a curriculum adjustment and structural adjustments that needed to occur.  Reinforce what we're doing positively and change what we needed to change," Yager said.

FWCS Superintendent, Wendy Robinson, said you can't compare the most recent score on the new scale to the one two years ago on the old scale.  Robinson said it would be like comparing apples to oranges.

"The criteria this year and last year it would be like me saying 'Mark, this is the score you got on this test last year and here is your grade.  This year you did even better.  Thank you, Mark.  But your grade is lower,'" Robinson explained.

Instead, Robinson is touting Fort Wayne's ISTEP scores, which have gone up across all grades and all subjects tested for three years in a row.

Click here to see each school's report card.