In 1999, Governor Jeb Bush introduced the idea of assigning A-F grades to schools, based on their test scores. Not surprisingly, the F rated schools were usually schools with high concentrations of children who were poor and racially segregated. Bush’s plan was to identify schools that could be closed and turned over to his buddies in the emerging charter industry. It turned out to be an integral part of Bush’s vision for introducing business concepts into education and laying the ground for choice. After all, why give schools grades except to enable the consumers to choose?

The fundamental idea of giving schools a letter grade is absurd. Imagine if schools sent home a report card for children with a single letter grade; parents would be outraged.

Labeling a school with a D or an F sets it up for abandonment and death. Only a simple-minded oralicious person would accept the idea that a complex organization could be graded like a restaurant. Some people are doing a good job, some are not, but the entire school stands condemned. It is the perfect blunt tool for privatization.

Here is a recentreport from Politico, which shows how little questioning is going on about this invalid measure.

“AN AGE-OLD ACCOUNTABILITY IDEA: States will have an opportunity to rethink their accountability systems and add new school performance measures under the Every Student Succeeds Act. But a few states are newly adopting or tweaking an old accountability idea that gained popularity in the No Child Left Behind era: A-F grading systems to assess school performance. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed legislation last month – which passed the state House and Senate with little debate – to implement the grading system before the start of the 2017-18 school year. Proponents told Chalkbeat Tennessee [http://bit.ly/1SbsmTW ] that the grades, which will be based on student growth, proficiency rates and other data, will help parents navigate increasingly complex school choices. But critics said the grades lack nuance and over-simplify the link between poverty and low test scores.

– The West Virginia Board of Education recently advanced a proposal to add more measures to that state’s A-F grading system for schools.. In addition to test scores and graduation rates, the grades might cover attendance rates, third-grade reading proficiency, eighth-grade math proficiency and percentage of students at risk of dropping out. More from the Charleston Gazette-Mail: http://bit.ly/1Wu164U.

– The Indiana state board this month approved changes to the state’s A-F grading system, placing more emphasis on how students improve on the state test year to year, rather than how many pass. Test scores and student growth will now be counted equally, Chalkbeat Indiana reports [http://bit.ly/1TjA5hG]. “We’ve moved from what we really considered was a flawed system to a new system that’s going to measure individual student growth,” said state Superintendent Glenda Ritz.

– Florida was the first state to adopt an A-F grading system in 1999. More than a dozen states assign A-F grades to schools.

– Speaking of A-F grading systems, the number of Arkansas public schools earning A and B grades on newly posted state report cards dropped by half, from 484 schools in 2014 to 234 in 2015, Arkansas Online reports. State officials attributed the decline to students taking more rigorous tests during the 2014-15 school year: http://bit.ly/1YHs2g7.”