Matt Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute here dissects the claims of Jeb Bush about the success of the state letter grade system.
As he shows, the number of A-rated schools went up because the state changed the rules of the game.
You can always get more points on the basketball court if you drop the basket a foot or two.
You can get more home runs if you bring the fences closer.
Are people foolish enough to believe the boast that Florida is now a model for the nation?
I happen to think that letter grades for schools are a ridiculous idea. Schools are complex institutions that do some things well and some things not as well. One can come up with a rating system that is far more sophisticated than a grade of A-F.
No one would dream of sending a child home with a report card with only one letter on it. Why in the world would anyone label a school with a single letter?
This is the rankest sort of political interference in the functioning of education.
No state or district should use letter grades to reward or humiliate schools.
This is politics, not accountability.
And it has nothing to do with improving education.
When the National Association of Independent Schools starts handing out letter grades to its members, let me know.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just yesterday you were mocking New Orleans schools for having low grades. Do you believe that school grades are informative or not?
Jeb feeding at the public trough….check out the baby piggies feeding off the teats:
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/02/06/florida-bush-i-get-the-point-but/
Um, whatever. My question was a fair one, I think. If Ms. Ravitch is going to use letter grades to attack New Orleans schools, it’s very odd to turn around the very next day and say that letter grades are “ridiculous”.
So yesterday’s post on New Orleans was “ridiculous”? Point noted.
You’re ridiculous! Jeb?
Live by test scores and letter grades, die by them.
You can’t impose them on the nation, then say they don’t count when your prize district and your showcase schools fail to meet your own measures.
Turn the logic around: If you’re going to say that grades are ridiculous, you can’t say that New Orleans’ school grades tell us anything about the success of schools there.
Sorry, my friend from Arkansas, but if you have been reading this blog, you know that the Cowen Institute of Tulane, a strong supporter of the privatization movement, said just this week that two-thirds of the schools in the Recovery School District were not good choices. The state of Louisiana has 70 districts. New Orleans Recovery School District is ranked 70th out of 70.
Do you only trust press releases from John White?
No. All I’m saying is that I don’t trust school grades, based on your own logic and arguments (except when you’re bashing schools that have low grades, such as New Orleans).
But we all thought they were reformed by Paul Vallas, which is his claim to fame.
What happened?
If reformers are going to cram letter grades down my throat, I am happy to turn their own game on them and show how the system that they instituted is the same one by which they construct their own noose. Bobby Jindal and John White want to sell RSD success, yet they hide the actual letter grades from the RSD website. They want to sell RSD success on one hand and criticize the Orleans Parish Public Schools (not state run, by the way), yet they refuse to report that RSD-NO has a D; RSD-LA has an F, yet Orleans has an A. Jindal and White hang themselves by their own rules.
I say, grade anything that moves. Custodians, lunch ladies, pencil sharpeners, reformers, everything needs a grade on it, now.
That article shows exactly why the idea of school grades is so ridiculous. In Colorado, there is an independent group that used data from the Colorado Department of Education and “translated” the CDE’s ratings into letter grades. However, they did the opposite of Jeb Bush and lowered the cut points so that more schools would receive Cs and below. They claim its so that parents can more easily evaluate their child’s school, but they also include a “take action” link, complete with questions for teachers, administrators and school board members–and approved answers that indicate the school is “on the right track.” I wrote about it here: http://www.examiner.com/article/what-you-should-know-about-colorado-school-grades. It’s so frustrating to see people reduce a school’s performance to a numbers game that supports their own agenda.
Shouldn’t this principle apply to students as well? As a 40 year advocate of giving narrative reports to families about their students, rather than a letter grade, I hope that Diane and others will urge that this same idea be applied to students. Giving a student a “letter” grade for a class is as simplistic as giving a school a letter grade.
I agree that narratives are more informative, but parents look for letters and children are often rewarded or punished for those letters. Remember too, that the parents often came up under NCLB and so may not comprehend what they read. I say both should be used for students. I gave this student this grade because ….. As for schools, they are very complex organisms and I really do not think they can be reduced to letter grades. There are just too many individual differences. A checklist and narrative would be useful, even though only the more educated parents are going to actually read and understand it.
Thanks for your note, twinkie1cat. I agree that some parents will and some won’t be able to read narrative reports. That’s part of the reason schools I’ve worked in or with combine these reports with family student teacher conferences. When this is done well, there is extensive discussion, sometimes led by students, about what they have accomplished. There are public schools throughout the country that are doing this.
Some families do want grades. Some are very satisfied and appreciative to receive narrative reports.
And some public schools/teachers do both.
I would not want to defend the notion that students are not very complex organisms. Perhaps both a narrative and a letter grade for s chops as well?
It would appear that JB (could this two sentence writer be JEB BUSH???) might be a rising star, by way of his media worshipers expose his chubby little face to, regularly on the pseudo news shows? Never a discouraging word there about the causes and effects his Bushian family policies have forced upon the world of academia! We sure know the Bush clan is the soul of brevity basically because there is miniscule to no justifications for “little” controversies #1 and particularly #2 have disgraced the country with: lying us into a war, international criminal actions of torture, rendition, and other Machiavellian
policies that have shredded the Bill of Rights, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of deaths #2 is responsible for…hard to defend such atrocities, so the less said the better must be the clan rule! Now the hopeful #3 is trying to earn his 10Karat
gold spurs by eating away at the last vestiges of public education just the way a termite eats our homes: by acting in a blatant subterfuge of caring for the institution he wants to give to his corporate e lists power over so they can crumble another base of democracy in the US! Sure couldn’t get a nastier partner than Rhee who has even less respect for the intended victim than Jeb! Oh, but wait, I failed to mention Jeb’s glowing contribution to
making us a banana republic, a total farce of another pillar of citizens’ rights…his participation, though often perpetrated outside the limelight: the theft of the Presidential election of 2000 in his state that brought “W” into the White House and started the various paths of ruin we all are trying to recover from. In that anti-intellectual, sh–
kicking state, intellectuals of any age are on the “dangerous” list. Just check out their
GOP, education plank of 2012; that ought to make anyone, smarter than a fifth grader
quake in their crocodile boots even if they do have the misfortune of living in Perry’s state: the Texas version of the Beverly Hillbillies!
Remember the “hanging chads” that got George W. elected? That was Jeb too. He’s an expert at changing the rules.
The Jebster is a spoiled rich kid in search of a legacy. Who knew George was the brighter one?
His legacy will be a sleazy wizard behind the curtain shelling out payola for his cronies while feigning concern for the poor children. Barbara and George H.W. now have even more to be ashamed of….they did not raise kind, thoughtful, caring, compassionate, conscientious men. Evidently money doesn’t buy you morals or decency.
From the ALEC Task Force Wash, DC, 2010, 31-day mailout to legislators (where they are sent drafts of legislation already written for them to take back to their respective states and pass off as their own):
[This excerpt is from the section lauding Florida’s instituting the reforms. This part focuses specifically on the use of a school letter grading system to panick the public into thinking schools are “failing.” The discussion leads into Parent Trigger, among other “reforms.” Keep in mind that this is advice given to legislators to help them promote prewritten legislation in their respective states. This excerpt comes from page 46 out of 133 (their page number 34, but pages are not consistently sequenced]:
Florida lawmakers have continued to update their reforms over time. Those interested in
the latest policy innovations in Florida can contact the Foundation for Excellence in
Education. The Foundation can assist with technical issues, provide sample rules created
by the Florida State Board of Education and other assistance.
Chapter 1. School and District Report Cards and Grades
Florida’s School Report Card system assigns all schools and districts a letter grade based
upon an elegant but powerful formula grading schools one half on overall scores, one
quarter on the gains of all students, one quarter on the gains of the bottom quarter of
students.
People instantly and intuitively understand letter grades, and this system served as the
lynchpin for the reforms by increasing community support and interest in improving
schools.
[The entire document is at http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7BFB3C17E2-CDD1-4DF6-92BE-BD4429893665%7D/ed_35daymailing-dc.pdf ]
Florida changed the rules last year (2011-12) also. The Florida Board of Education decided to “grade” spelling and grammar in the state-wide FCAT writes–for the first time ever. And, guess what, the student scores were horrible. So horrible, in fact, the state lowered the passing score so that the truth wouldn’t be revealed (a curriculum absent spelling and grammar is a failed curriculum)–Jeb’s school-grades regime is a failure.
Florida also loves “safe-harbor.” This is the unpublicized reality that allows schools that “fail” according to Jeb’s, George’s, Barack’s, Michelle’s, and Arne’s definitions to be labeled as “C,” “B,” and even “A.”
Platitudes don’t solve problems.