State Releases New School Rating System Which Contradicts CPS Rating System

From Chicago Tribune:

About 7 in 10 Illinois schools are rated “commendable” on the state’s overhauled school report cards, but the simplified, positive labels belie a more nuanced story of school quality here.

The school rating system is new to the state report cards, which were made public Tuesday, and is meant to describe how well each school educates all types of students. Schools fall into one of four tiers based on last year’s test data: “exemplary,” “commendable,” “underperforming” or “lowest performing.”

The label system relies heavily on another new feature of the report cards: measuring students’ year-over-year improvement on standardized tests instead of simply their passing rates.

Of course, we needed to see how some of our schools are doing so went straight to the search.  The new state report cards didn't look pretty for our local neighborhood school:

The Tribune article goes onto note that the methodology for the state at times is at odds with CPS rating methodology:

The state ratings are separate from the district’s School Quality Rating Policy, a CPS in-house performance category system widely referred to as SQRP. District officials stressed that the CPS system is based on other metrics and relies on different standardized tests than the state’s.

Each rating system assigns what looks like contradictory ratings to many city schools, which may send mixed messages to parents.

While only a dozen CPS schools carry the state’s top exemplary rating, the district’s rating system gives its top mark to 185 schools.

At least 86 schools that earned CPS’ best two ratings were designated underperforming or lowest performing by the state. One school that earned CPS’ top rating, Moos Elementary, was among the lowest performing 5 percent statewide, according to the Illinois State Board of Education measure.

Meanwhile, a couple of Chicago schools that the state viewed as commendable were the worst-rated by CPS standards.

That contradiction appears to be the case for South Loop elementary as it's rated "Level 1" - which means it's a the higher end of the CPS rating spectrum.