School grades remain unchanged

Jay Schools received its grades for the 2019-2020 school year Wednesday, but the grades essentially mean nothing.

The result was the same as it was for the 2018-2019 school year — a B rating across the board for all schools in the district except West Jay County Middle and General Shanks Elementary schools, both of which were graded a C.

Both West Jay and General Shanks are now closed as a result of school consolidation.

The grades are the same from the previous school year because standardized testing was canceled this past spring in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Indiana Department of Education said it could not calculate grades for the school year without results from those tests, which is the main component in the grading rubric.

So, the state copied and pasted each grade from the 2018-19 school year for the 2019-2020 grade; however, because 2018-2019 was the first year of ILEARN standardized testing, the best grade from that and the 2017-2018 school year was used, per a state law signed by Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb holding schools harmless for the first two years of ILEARN test scores.

Just 37% of Indiana students passed both the math and English portions of the ILEARN test, which was taken for the first and only time in spring 2019. Jay County students performed better than the state average but still just 42.7% passed both the math and the English portions of the ILEARN test compared to 55.7% of students passing both on ISTEP+ in 2018.

ILEARN was supposed to be taken by Jay County third through eighth graders for the 2019-20 school year from April 20 through May 15, but that was canceled because school was no longer in session in-person at the time.

Jay School Corporation received a B grade for the 2019-2020 school year, the same grade it has been awarded every year since the 2015-2016 school year. Jay County Christian Academy also received a B rating.