Letter from Superintendent

Dear Provo Residents,

In the next few days you will see in your mailbox our annual summer newsletter to the community. I have discovered that I shared some inaccurate data in my write-up about the district’s school grades. Rather than the 14 “A” and “B” schools I reported, we had 13 (3 “A” schools and 10 “B” schools). Grades are assigned by the state based on student achievement data from the 2015-2016 school year.

The state changed their grading cut scores during the Fall of 2016, preceded by many versions and calculations that took place at that time. My number of 14 schools was based on a preliminary, not final, set of calculations. FYI, if the state had not chosen to raise the cut scores for school grades, Provo City School District would have had 10 “A” and 3 “B” schools. The impact of this re-scoring was similar for Provo City School District as with schools state-wide.

Please be assured that we have approved school improvement plans for all of our schools in the district, including those that did not receive “A” grades.

I wanted to make sure that the community is aware of my error. My desire is to publicly correct this error now as the newsletters are arriving in your mailboxes. Please accept my apology for this confusion.

Keith C. Rittel

Superintendent

Provo City School District