On March 22, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed
legislation “aimed at ensuring all students in Virginia have the best
opportunity to learn and that students, regardless of their zip code, receive a
world class education.”
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| http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/report-card-f-76289-20120503-3.jpg |
Included in McDonnell’s All Students initiative was the creation of an A-F
School Report Card. According to his press release, the new performance ratings
will simplify the current system of accountability to help parents fully
understand the performance of their child’s school. It continues by stating,
“the new report cards will recognize schools for challenging all students to
reach high levels of achievement. They will also give schools a tool to
encourage more parental and community involvement.”
Sounds good, right?
We can’t argue against high achievement, parental involvement and
accountability. All are extremely important to effective schools and student
achievement.
But let’s peel away the layers and ask ourselves, “Does
grading our schools benefit our students?”
No.
Instead, school report cards may actually cause more damage.
School-wide grades are notoriously inaccurate. They do not increase parental
involvement and they can ruin teacher morale. This clearly is not a recipe for
school improvement.
Question 1: Are School
Grades Reliable and Accurate?
Accountability systems are only useful if their measures are
reliable and clear. Creating such a system is a monumental—perhaps
impossible—task. Ask 100 people to define a high quality or A school and you’ll
probably get 100 different answers. Of course, Virginia will rely primarily on
SOL tests and other data such as graduation rates, but disagreements over what
specific measures to include and how to include them are inevitable. Virginia
hopes to use a balance of both absolute performance factors such as student SOL
test scores and growth measures that encompass changes in SOL scores over time.
Both measures present their own unique set of problems.
Absolute performance factors vary little from year-to-year, but they are also
highly correlated with student characteristics such as socio-economic status.
Conversely, growth measures, which the Board of Education will have two years
to develop and add to the grading system, fluctuate greatly. Accurate and credible growth measures require
multiple years of data.
One grade cannot tell the whole story. What do I mean? A
good school, let’s say one earning a B, may not be serving the needs of ALL of
it’s students very well. For example,
the overall student population may meet the math benchmarks, but a subgroup/gap
group (Hispanics, Blacks, or students with disabilities or economically
disadvantaged) may not meet the necessary requirements. One grade cannot
portray this; a narrative is needed.
A narrative would also be necessary to differentiate between
schools. In a fictitious example, only
5% of Millard Fillmore High School students receive free/reduced lunches, but at
Andrew Johnson High School 95% of students qualify for reduced lunches. We cannot expect these schools to earn similar SOL scores or have comparable graduation rates. Similarly, we must address the difference between low-performing schools and schools serving lower-performing students.
McDonnell claims that Virginia’s current system lacks
clarity. Oversimplifying the process by assigning one grade actually undermines
his goal of clarity. A-F grades fail to explain how or why a school earned such
a grade, nor do they tell you much about a school’s true effectiveness.
Question 2: Do School
Grades Increase Parental Involvement?
Governor McDonnell suggests that creating a school report
card will increase parental and community involvement. In the March/April issue
of Education Policy Rebecca Jacobsen
of Michigan State warns against presenting unclear or misleading information
because it can ultimately erode parental support for the schools. As part of
her research, Jacobsen examined New York City Schools, each of which is
assigned a simple letter grade. As a result of a policy of capping the number
of schools that can receive an A grade, many schools grades fell. As a result, parent satisfaction
declined—despite the fact that student performance didn’t drop. Her research
also concluded that parent satisfaction did not increase when school grades
increased.
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| Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell |
Jacobsen’s research highlights two important facets of
school grades. First, the effect of declining grades has a larger effect than
seeing a school maintaining or improving its performance. Declining grades erode trust and can lead to
declining community and parental support. Secondly, she states, “In our rush to
produce data of all shapes and sizes and then reshape these data for policy or
political purposes, we cannot forget how the public is interpreting these
data.”
Like Jacobsen, I do believe in high student expectations and
accountability. We should strive for transparency and accountability. But, in
our haste to create such a system Virginia has ignored too many variables
(socio-economic status, percentage of special education students, percentage of
English language learners, etc). Despite good intentions, Oklahoma, Florida, New
York City and others rushed to implement school grades. Flaws in their grading
systems were soon discovered and changes were made. The unfortunate byproduct
of such haste: erosion of the public’s trust in schools, ineffective and harmful
education policy, and plummeting teacher morale. Of course, who suffered the
most: students.
As McDonnell suggests, parents understand A-F grades, why
not eliminate a single grade in favor of multiple school indicators that
accurately reflect a school’s performance? Creating a balanced grading system
would enable each school to be accurately measured in regards to student
achievement, student progress and other strategic goals established by each
school.
Question 3: How Will
School Report Cards Affect Teacher Morale
Because of the newness of school grades, I found little
no research indicating how school grading systems impact teacher morale. But I
can speak from both personal experience and other research. Goals that others choose for us seldom
motivate us to change. In Drive: The
Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Daniel Pink concluded, “Goals that
people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually
healthy. But goals imposed by others—sales targets, quarterly reports,
standardized test scores, and so on—can sometimes have dangerous side effects.”
Pink suggests that teachers are motivated by mastery,
autonomy and purpose. As teachers we want to know we are doing our jobs well; we
don’t need a standardized test or a school grade to tell us this. We desire to
have freedom to choose our own goals and how to achieve them. Finally, wanting
to make a difference in the lives of our students motivates us. In the last
twenty years, flexibility, autonomy and creativity have eroded. Instead, we’ve
been besieged by federal, state, and district compliance checklists.
School report cards, especially in schools with
lower-performing students, will further diminish our sense of accomplishment
and purpose.
What Should Be Done
We all stand together for raising student expectations, even
if mandated by state or federal governments. Instead of rushing to provide
parents with a singular letter grade, we should proceed deliberately and
cautiously by implementing the following.
1.
Eliminate the single grade and replace it with
multiple school measurements that accurately portray a school’s performance.
2.
To ensure accuracy and balance, combine both
absolute and growth-based data. Effective growth models use multiple years of
data to measure the school’s effect on student performance.
3.
Data should not be used for high-stakes
decisions, such as school takeovers or closures.
4.
Use compiled data to develop school-based improvement
plans that focus on incremental and continuous improvement. Plans should be
locally generated with teachers and administrators collaborating, Struggling
schools should receive additional resources such as instructional and
assessment experts.
5.
Schools should be measured on the progress they
make in achieving their goals.
Government attempts to grade schools will backfire if done
for political purposes. We must take the appropriate steps to depoliticize
education and empower our educators to make the necessary changes.
What are your thoughts?
Pink, Daniel. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York, NY: Riverhead, 2009.
Michigan State University (2013, March 25). How school report cards can backfire. Science Daily. Retrieved March 26, 2013 from http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/how-school-report-cards-can-backfire/
