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Oklahoma School Grading Problems Continue

a report card with a large, red letter F circled
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The Oklahoma State Department of Education has confirmed local school leaders' accounts of significant fluctuations in preliminary A-F grades for schools.

Schools had a Monday deadline to request that the state correct or otherwise verify their new school grade cards. On Friday, State Superintendent Janet Barresi said her department needed up to two more weeks before asking the state Board of Education to finalize the report cards and release them publicly.

During Monday morning's Board of Education meeting, Barresi said there was a "calculation glitch", and that the board has received more than 1,000 correction requests since October 16.

She said as long as changes were requested within the submission window, they're being reviewed.

The Tulsa World reports Tulsa Public Schools found that 45 of the district schools' scores were changed by the state Friday night - resulting in lower grades at 10 schools.

Tulsa Public Schools submitted 74 data verification requests to the state within the first 24 hours of the review period and an estimated 10 to 20 in the days since then. Johnson said the district had already received responses from the state to all of its requests. Lisa Muller, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at Jenks Public Schools, said raw scores for four Jenks schools and corresponding grades for two of them had changed Friday night, only to rebound Saturday. "We did not make any requests that would have affected these," she said. "The most frustrating thing is that throughout this review period, each time we would begin verifying data, the numbers would change. And that's throughout the entire time ? from the first day right up through this Saturday, right before the 10 a.m. (Monday) deadline for data verification requests.

By Saturday, a check showed that the individual school site scores had all rebounded to within one point of where they had been earlier Friday.  

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Brian Hardzinski is from Flower Mound, Texas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. He began his career at KGOU as a student intern, joining KGOU full time in 2009 as Operations and Public Service Announcement Director. He began regularly hosting Morning Edition in 2014, and became the station's first Digital News Editor in 2015-16. Brian’s work at KGOU has been honored by Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters, and local and regional chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists. Brian enjoys competing in triathlons, distance running, playing tennis, and entertaining his rambunctious Boston Terrier, Bucky.
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