Mississippi commission asks State Board to open rulemaking on accountability business rules after federal compliance fixes

The Mississippi Commission on School Accreditation voted on April 4 to request that the State Board of Education begin the administrative rulemaking process to revise Mississippi Administrative Code 7-24, the state's Public School Accountability Standards, incorporating a set of annual clarifications and several changes aimed at federal compliance.

Alan Burrow, a Department of Education presenter, told the commission the package largely clarifies current practice but includes changes that will alter business rules in limited ways. Burrow said the updates confirm that the ACT remains a required participation assessment for high school and that students enrolled in month eight will be included in participation-rate calculations for grades 3'8.

The package includes a key edit to growth calculations prompted by a review with the Office of Inspector General tied to Mississippi's Every Student Succeeds Act state plan. "We were told we could not do [allow component scores to exceed their allocated points]," Burrow said, and the proposed language would ensure "no accountability component may exceed the maximum allocated points for the component." Burrow said the change is intended to preserve federally required weighting across accountability components.

The commission also reviewed changes to acceleration and course weighting. Burrow said a state law (cited in the presentation as section 37 1 0 6 93) requires AP courses to be weighted the same as dual-credit courses in the state's accountability model, which eliminates a 2019 provision that had added extra weighting for AP. "That prevents us from keeping Section 9.9," Burrow said. Burrow agreed to amend proposed wording in Section 9.6 to explicitly cover AP, IB and ACE where appropriate after a commissioner asked for that clarification.

Section 10 will clarify the business practice for banked scores so a banked result counts only if the student meets the full academic-year requirement in the relevant tenth-grade year. Sections 11'13 update federal-identification language (Comprehensive Support and Improvement, Targeted Support and Improvement, Additional Targeted Support and Improvement) to align the state's rules with its federally approved ESSA plan and recent feedback from the U.S. Department of Education. The commission also proposed adding Section 22.4 to address how to assign accountability results for charter schools that do not operate tested grade levels, applying tested-grade results from the next higher tested grade within the charter school's served area back to the student's school of origin.

Chair Pamela Manner moved the meeting to a vote on a motion to request that the State Board begin the administrative (ADA) rulemaking process to revise the administrative code with the suggested edits, including the amendment to 9.6; the motion carried.

What happens next: The commission's vote authorizes staff to ask the State Board to initiate the formal notice-and-comment rulemaking process. The rulemaking timeline and any further technical edits will be set by the State Board and its staff. The commission will likely review public comments and draft rules as the State Board moves forward.