Governor Mike Pence agreed to pause the A-F school grading program because of major problems with the testing program on which the grades are based. Superintendent Glenda Ritz had advocated such a pause and Pence has adamantly refused to consider it.
A-F school grades were first implemented by then-Governor Jeb Bush in Florida and have since spread to many states where privatizers want to embarrass, humiliate, and privatize as many schools as possible. New York City tried the A-F grading system for a few years under Mayor Bloomberg, but Mayor de Blasio stopped this irrational method of appraising schools.
In Indiana, the test scores drive punitive consequences:
State test scores are key factors in determining teacher pay decisions as well as school A-F grades. Because the state introduced new, more challenging standards in 2014, ISTEP passing rates are expected to drop 16 percentage points in English and 24 percentage points in math. That also means fewer schools are expected to get A’s, and more likely will receive D’s and F’s.
Schools that earn F-grades can have serious consequences ahead of them. For example, the state can take schools over, handing them off to be run by charter school networks or other outside groups, if they repeatedly get F’s for four consecutive years. Teachers who receive poor evaluations can be fired or declared ineligible for pay raises.
You would certainly not send home a child with a report card containing only one grade, A-F. As in, your child is a C for the semester. Report cards typically consist of multiple measures. Only a dunderhead with a slavish devotion to standardized testing would give any credibility to labeling a school with a single letter grade based primarily or wholly on test scores.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
I love the fact this was such a “success” in other states that they are suspending the program and Texas decides it is a good idea to go down this well traveled path.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/the-scarlet-letter-again/
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Was it Daniels or Pence who got busted with the school grading thing because he adjusted a negative grade for a charter school run by one of his donors? (For that matter, are Daniels and Pence actually two different people? Has anyone actually seen Pence talk while Daniels was taking a drink?)
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It was former Indiana Ed Commissioner,Tony Bennett who lost his election and sadly darkened Florida’s door to serve as the state’s appointed Education Commissioner. He resigned in disgrace when his Indiana grade rigging became public knowledge. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323681904578641951137191798
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The A to F school report card grade was another way to reveal the number of children who live in poverty. The odds favor the fact that the higher the ratio of children that live in poverty, the lower the grade would be for the school.
This would hold true for every country in the world that has high rates of children living in poverty.
A 2013 Stanford study determined that a poor ranking on the international PISA tests was linked to the ratio of children who lived in poverty in that country—for instance, the United States that has the highest ratio of children living in poverty in the developed world.
The study found: “There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
“Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.”
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
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I’ve been telling Utah administrators and legislators this for years. I tell them that they could save millions of dollars a year, and a lot of class time, by not giving the end of year CC tests (called SAGE in Utah), and just give grades to schools based on the percentage of free and reduced lunch in each school.
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” Because the state introduced new, more challenging standards in 2014, ISTEP passing rates are expected to drop 16 percentage points in English and 24 percentage points in math”
Doesn’t this accidentally reveal the simple truth of reform?
Higher standards in general and the common core in particular are supposed to make kids smarter/more educated/college and career ready/score better on tests/magically erase effects of poverty/honor their civil rights/insert whatever claim you want.
And yet… The real life results can be mathematically predicted. Kids will fail at a greater rate.
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“Only a dunderhead with a slavish devotion to standardized testing would give any credibility to labeling a school with a single letter grade based primarily or wholly on test scores. ”
Add to your list of dunderheads: all members of ALEC who promoted this nonsense and to the other masters of dunderhead grading, reductions of innumerable metrics to a single grade, including Bill Gates.
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Right on.
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It doesn’t matter if the state improves the test. It doesn’t matter if teachers learn how better to teach to the test. It doesn’t matter because, unless the ISTEP is validated for use as a tool to evaluate teachers and schools, using the test in that manner is inappropriate and invalid.
The real problem is with the A-F grading based on test scores, and teacher evaluations based on test scores. The Indiana student achievement test, ISTEP, hasn’t been developed to evaluate teachers and schools. Using them in that way is the way to instantly invalidate the results.
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Given the stupidity evident among these politicians supporting the A-F grading of schools, couldn’t we just go ahead and grade the schools they attended as F, in which case F does not stand for fine?
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Well, as long as we’re discussing dunderheads and grading, anyone want to comment on how this reflects on the very idea of grading STUDENTS on either a 100 – 0 or A – F scale? When teachers and other stakeholders here read about the absurdity of grading SCHOOLS (and districts, states, and entire countries) on such scales based on one very doubtful measurement, do any start to question their own assignment of grades to students based on whatever they base doing such things upon? Or is it completely different when we teachers pass judgment on students?
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Thanks Michael, for bringing up a point I have been pounding here since the inception of Diane’s blog (and before with anyone else who would listen, but more importantly with my students every year and day)–the sheer idiocy of “grading” students in any subject, in any way, shape or form.
It’s amazing how the students understand that insanity but that once they are out of the schooling environment they seem to change, “Well that’s the way it is and has always been so the kids of today need to suck it up and go for the ‘A’.”
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It’s my fervent hope that if and when “reform” ever passes and teachers are allowed to teach, that they use this experience to understand what it feels like to be controlled, evaluated and externally manipulated rather than seen and recognized as an autonomous human being, and that this understanding gets translated into teaching in schools for all kids, not just the elite whose parents demand it.
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If I am ever allowed to determine the direction of my classroom again, I see many opportunities to work with colleagues and try different assessments and communicate progress to parents/guardians. I look at it less as “passing judgment” and more as guiding and communicating. But do not look at just the teachers. How many colleges, vocational schools, businesses, and parents are comfortable with the A-F system and do not want to try something else? One of my own kids attended a school that used mastery grading and something like pass/fail. Some parents could not handle it and left.
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A few years back, parents of 5-6 students decided that they wanted their children to receive letter grades like the 7-8 students “to get them ready for high school.” (Even grade 7 students only received letter grades the second part of the year.) Up until then teachers had written wonderful multi-page narrative reports that really highlighted what each child was accomplishing. There was a checklist type insert, but it was well supported by narrative. Instead parents wanted these reports reduced to a single letter grade for each subject. Predictably it wasn’t long before the call for more and better conferences was heard. Grades have almost a religious hold on people’s psyches as if there is something inherently more honest about a number rank than a detailed narrative.
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This was my posting on Facebook, the Republican page.
For our schools the failure rates are in. I know that your background is not in education but would ask you:
Do you believe that teaching children they are failures is good education? Is that what you teach YOUR children?
Further: politicians have demanded that teachers, schools be accountable to them, the wonderful wizards of Indianapolis, D.C. Do you believe that those who teach children they are failures, who take vast amounts of money from the schools, give it to incompetent corporations to grade et al are competent to grade teachers, schools?
Have you read or do you care about the many teachers who have reported that their young students cry because they cannot understand the questions which are so age inappropriate, poorly constructed ad nauseum?
WOW. They are not now going to hold teachers and schools accountable for these gross failures of our illustrious politicians. How VERY thoughtful.
And now THEY are going to “strengthen education”. How encouraging.
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Great comment!!!
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