Students aren’t the only ones who receive a letter grade for their work efforts.  The Arizona Department of Education recently released letter grades for all Arizona schools and our lovely Sahuaro High School has been given a B. We are also the third ranked high school in TUSD,  1st being UHS and 2nd being Sabino. We got graded on graduation rates, college readiness, and unlike the old grading system, we were graded more lightly for the AzMerit tests. Unfortunately next time we – Sahuaro- might receive a lower grade. Why you might ask? Well all of our feeder schools have been graded C for Gridley, D for Magee , and F for Secrist and Booth-Fickett middle schools.

TUSD, Arizona’s largest school district, has more poor grades than good grades and most of the district’s grades are mediocre.  As many as eight schools in this school district are failing and an additional eighteen have D’s. That’s a really different change from the last time Arizona issued letter grades  in 2014. Under the old system, schools could only receive F’s after receiving a D for three years with no improvement. Ten percent of TUSD schools are failing  according to the state’s newest ranking for our district.

Gabriel Trujillo, the superintendent of TUSD said that he wants this school district to have higher grades than lower by next year and doesn’t want any schools to receive F’s. The state law requires schools with failing grades to come up with an improvement. Nearly 9 percent of TUSD schools that received an A grade are also below the state-wide average. The superintendent of TUSD says to not worry about this situation and to not give the teachers a hard time. Residents of Tucson who have kids who go to Tucson Unified School District are really disappointed and want to help get these test grades up.

Sources: tucson.com