SALISBURY — As Rowan-Salisbury Schools charts its path through renewal, it won’t be focused on school performance grades expected to be released next week.

Like clockwork, the state releases annual letter grades and scores for each school in the state — called school performance grades. The grades are based mostly on standardized test scores and partially on student growth. And Rowan-Salisbury Superintendent Lynn Moody said she expects the scores to be released next week. Moody said she has seen the scores but could not speak about them until after the release.

While noting that the school system has a different focus as a “renewal” school district, giving it a wide range of freedom over things such as curriculum, scheduling and budgeting, Moody said poverty is the most significant factor in standardized test scores.

“I bet you within 5%, test scores haven’t changed in any school district, not just in North Carolina but across the nation, unless the demographics change,” Moody told the Post. “It would be a rare situation. There are only one or two situations where somebody with high poverty outperformed those test scores.”

What’s more, while the grades assigned to school are based on test scores and called “performance grades,” they are anything but what people traditionally association with a letter grade.

“The test is actually redesigned and renormed to make sure the results are on a curve. … And think about the attention that it takes to read passages for three hours if you’re 9 years old,” Moody said. “You might be able to read at a third-grade level, but for three hours? Think about the sustainability of being able to do that.”

In school performance grades released last year, Moody described results as “flat,” with some schools seeing their scores drop, others not changing and some seeing improvement. Only Carson High School, Rowan County Early College, Faith Elementary and Bostian Elementary received scores of A or B.

Moody said scores are specifically tied to letter grades to give the impression that they are similar to grades in the classroom — that someone who scores 100 on all their assignments will receive an A.

“This is a predictive test. It was designed to be predictive in nature. It was never designed to be an accountability model,” she said. “I’m not saying that the test is a terrible test. It tells us something. … But it’s very limited in scope.”

But as she spoke about upcoming test scores during Monday’s school board meeting, Moody faced questions from board member Dean Hunter, who asked what Rowan-Salisbury’s standard for success would be with renewal and when it would be ready.

“You say that (the state) is trying to see whether after five years we have increased academic performance. Based on what?” Hunter said. “There still has to be that standard, and that’s the struggle that I’ve had. … I’m trying to figure out how they are going to say it was successful. Because you said it was successful? Because the board had a meeting and had balloons and T-shirts and said, ‘We succeeded?’”

Moody’s answer was that the school system is working diligently to create a standard and an accountability model.

“We create it and say, ‘Here’s what we believe should be the accountability model to fit our directional system,’” Moody said. “And I’m just trying to tell you that I’m not prepared to give it to you yet. We will have it; we know it’s the big elephant in the room.

RSS’ “directional system” — areas it will focus on to ensure students are engaged — includes academic skills, unique life goals and interpersonal skills. The academic skills requirement involves mastering fundamental standards in subjects such as English, math, science and social studies. Unique life goals requires students to set objectives for themselves on their “unique smartness,” career aspirations and passions. Interpersonal skills requires the student to develop creativity, leadership, teamwork and other abilities.

Moody said the school system has been working for six months with N.C. State University’s Friday Institute for Education Innovation to develop an accountability model based on the directional system. In total, the system has been working on the accountability model for a year, Moody said.

“So, we didn’t start just because we just got our test scores,” she said.

Moody said RSS asked state officials to pull fundamental standard test results out of end-of-course and end-of-grade exams, but they declined. The state is OK with RSS using data from so-called “NC Check-ins,” which are tests administered for grades three through eight, Moody said. The tests are given three times, each administered after nine weeks of instruction.

Unique life goals haven’t been measured by school systems before, Moody said. And some of the ongoing work involves how best to measure those, she said.

“We know what the pieces are. We just have to decide the percentages, if we use percentages,” she said.

Moody said she is disappointed that the accountability model won’t be ready by next week, when test scores are released, but that she hopes to have the model ready by October.

Board member Travis Allen said he agrees with some of the concerns expressed by Hunter but that he thinks success can’t be judged at the district level. Rather, it’s more important to judge success at the school level, Allen said, noting that the state would judge RSS on whether local control has any benefit during renewal.

“I think that we always revert back to fear of the old system. We always revert back to, ‘What are they going to think?’” Allen said. “We have to first identify who we are accountable to. … Is our ultimate goal to make Raleigh happy? We’re never going to do that.”

The system is accountable to students and parents at the school level, Allen said. Teachers need to ensure students are giving “100% effort,” and that can’t be measured on a test, he said.

“Success for my child may be different than success for a straight-A student,” he said.

Contact editor Josh Bergeron at 704-797-4248.