By Kristin
I played coed indoor soccer at one point in my pre-mother life and was hastily made keeper so that we could have a (faster, more skilled) guy on the field.
I had to learn to tend goal quickly. The most important thing, I realized, was to keep my eyes on the ball, not the game. It's more interesting to watch the game, more terrifying (or reassuring) to watch the clock, and hopeful to watch the score, but the important thing is to know where the ball is. It doesn't matter where the ball used to be. What matters is where it is now, and where it's going. Grading schools is like watching anything but the ball while tending goal.
Florida's Education Chief resigned over a controversy about his changing a charter school's grade from a C to an A when he was School Chief in Indiana. Whether the charter school earned a C or an A means almost nothing. No school's grade does. A school might be a D school by someone else's standards but happens to be a perfect fit for your child. It might be an A school and have the worst bullying in the district. If you can't get off your rear end and go look at a school and talk to the people who are there, you're misled to accept a letter grade as an indication of quality, or lack of.
Legislators and policy-advocates in Washington State are debating establishing a grading system for our schools. Supporters say it makes the information "more accessible" to parents by simplifying it into a letter grade "they can understand." This is misleading and insulting. Parents are capable of, or capable of being taught how to analyze data so that it's meaningful to them. What is the trend in the school's test data? What are the school's strengths? What is the emotional and social curriculum like? What's the school's social and academic culture?
If you're looking at the grade, which was issued for data generated, probably, two years prior, you're not seeing what's happening in the school right now. It's like me saying, "last time that guy had the ball he kicked it out of bounds," and relaxing instead of getting ready to guard my goal. It's like me looking at the scoreboard and thinking, "We're winning!" and missing a shot that goes over my left shoulder.
Accountability for accountability's sake is stupid and wastes precious resources. We can spend a lot of time designing and implementing a grading policy for schools, or we can spend that time finding out why some schools are doing great things and helping them share their strategies with struggling schools.
Here's what I look for when enrolling my daughters or looking for jobs: Do people smile? Are kids interested and busy during class? Do grown ups speak respectfully to kids? Does the principal give me the time of day? Are the bathrooms clean? Do kids say, "sorry," if they crash into you in the hall? Do people hold the doors open for each other? Do teachers and kids value quality when it comes to work? I look at the ball, because that's what matters. I could care less what someone somewhere slaps on the building and staff in terms of an A-F grade, and I've spent the last 38 years in schools.
The grades Tony Bennett gave Indiana schools are worthless. No matter how carefully schools are graded in Washington State the information will already be obsolete by the time the letter hits the page. We're better off paying attention, putting our bodies where our opinions are, and getting up close and personal with our schools.
Greg and Sandy, great points. My biggest concern with the parent trigger is that we tend to see the same kind of parents get fired up and insist on change. It’s usually a group of parents who are highly literate in the public school system and who feel strongly that their child’s needs are most important. Their children are typically not the population public schools are failing.
When these parents take the reins of the school, or school district policy, you don’t end up with a school that really meets the needs of historically underserved students and their families. When the focus is on test scores, and the tests themselves are culturally biased, we’re chasing a tail that belongs to the wrong dog.
What a great point that a D school can be a perfect fit for a child. My school has gone from a low D to a high D to a high C in two years. And we all celebrate. But what’s lost are all the real reasons why we’re at capacity while schools with higher grades are at 50% – 70% capacity and closing. We are simply a great fit for so many kids – a strong and challenging IB curriculum, many unbelievably good teachers, and a welcoming, nurturing environment.
Kristin — you are exactly right that the “grading” of schools is confusing and needs to be rethought. In addition to the situations you describe Calfornia failing schools are suspect to a “parent trigger” which allows parents to actually take control of the school — firing administrators and teachers.
There has to be some “balance” to the needs of all educational stakeholders. There is no easy answers but the currently reactions to school performance grading are too extreme.