It’s that time of year again to see how your school compares to the rest of Maryland’s public schools.

The new Maryland School Report Card ratings were released during a state school board meeting on Tuesday, giving the public an idea of a school’s overall performance on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

Here’s what to know about how those ratings are determined and what they say about your school:

What does a school’s star rating mean?

The Maryland State Department of Education will be using 2023-24 school year data to evaluate how well schools are supporting their students.

Each school can earn between 1 and 5 stars, with 5 being the best. The ratings, the state says, are only a snapshot of how a school is performing. A low number of stars doesn’t necessarily mean a school is bad. The goal is to identify what the school is doing well, where to improve and how the school compares to others.

The number of stars is determined by points a school earns on a rubric that measures several criteria:

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• Academic achievement: That’s how well a school’s students did on state standardized tests in English and math.
• Academic progress: This measures how much better the school’s test scores were compared to the prior school year.
• Progress in English language proficiency: For kids whose first language is not English, this metric reflects how many are on track to learn the language.
• School quality and student success: This factors in attendance, the curriculum, and a survey of students and educators on the school environment.
• Readiness for postsecondary success: For high schools only, this is a measure of how many ninth graders complete core coursework and how many graduates are meeting high standards.
• Graduation rate: For high schools only, it’s the percentages of students who graduated in four and five years.

How is a school’s star rating calculated?

Schools earn points for each category, with the highest possible score of 100 points. To earn 5 stars, schools need at least 75 points. Schools with 60 to 74 points earn 4 stars, those with 45 to 59 points get 3 stars, those with 30 to 44 points get 2 stars, and those with below 30 points get 1 star.

Some categories earn a school more points than others; year-over-year progress on state tests, for example is more important than the test scores themselves.

How have these calculations changed in recent years?

Chronic absenteeism — kids who miss more than 10% of school days of school in a year — became a big problem during the COVID-19 pandemic, when students weren’t inside school buildings full time. With that in mind, the state education department decided to change its school-rating formula for a year, putting less weight on chronic absence.

It changed back to normal last school year. As a result, Maryland had 104 fewer 5-star schools in the 2022-23 school year than it did in 2018-19.

What will school ratings look like in the future?

The state has plans to change how it rates schools. That includes improving the Report Card. State Superintendent Carey Wright announced the revamp in the spring, as well as the need for a task force to brainstorm what a new accountability system will look like.

She was critical of the inconsistency between stars and test scores. About 76% of Maryland schools received at least 3 stars, yet only 47% of students were proficient on the state exams, she noted. In comparison to other states, Maryland is 40th in the nation for fourth grade reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“You can’t have three-quarters of your schools being rated as excellent, if you will, and then not seeing student achievement, almost commensurate with that,” Wright said in April.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.