The state’s grades for school districts in Ohio were released, and they were mostly awful. The idea for giving letter grades originated with Jeb Bush, and no one has ever produced an iota of evidence that they lead to school improvement although they surely produce teaching to the test and misplaced goals.
Charter school grades were even worse than public schools. 75% of charter schools ranked D or F. Two-thirds of charters ranked F, compared to 25% of public school districts. I don’t think this is what Jeb Bush had in mind. More than half of public school districts rated A, B, or C.
Two experienced superintendents decried the farce of school grades, which are a holy grail to those on the right who are intent on defaming public schools and pushing privatization.
But, not surprisingly, the spokesman for the right wing Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Where I was a founding member many years ago) defended the grades and said they probably show how bad the public schools are. The spokesman has a career in the privatization movement, but no experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent.
Why is a proponent of school choice on the reporter’s speed dial? Whom should the public believe about the validity of school grades? Working educators or lobbyists for privatization?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who will grade the graders?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Texas is implementing the same stupid concept. Thanks, Lt. Dan (Dan Patrick, Lt. Governor of Texas)
It was a bad idea before it was passed, it was a bad idea after it was passed and it will remain a bad idea from this point forward.
A few more of my feelings are below:
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/the-scarlet-letter-again/
LikeLike
They change the measure so often no one in the public has any idea what the grades mean. This whole thing has become ridiculous.
We’re ordered to sit for the tests in the spring, the incomprehensible and ever-changing “measures” come out in the fall, and other than that there’s little or no mention of or concern about public schools.
Public school kids could show up for 9 days of testing every spring and do nothing else and the entire ed reform government/lobbying apparatus at the state level would be satisfied.
It’s a real betrayal to tell these kids and teachers that these scores will be used to “improve their schools” and “target resources” when every year the scores are used instead to bash their schools and impose a new set of unfunded mandates. We were told 15 years ago when this started that if we just went along the “improvements” and “investments” would follow- they never did.
Ed reformers don’t hold up their end of the bargain, year after year after year.
LikeLike
Jeb Bush’s alphabetic rankings are an example of bad policy spreading like a virus. These score based rankings work to the advantage of affluent mostly white districts and to the disadvantage of lower socioeconomic communities. These flawed rankings can influence property values and contribute to illegal, but widely practiced, redlining.
LikeLike
The rankings were intended to generate more schools for the charter industry. There will always be a bottom 5%.
LikeLike
Now when will the supes condemn the grading of students?
LikeLike
As soon as teachers on the whole become aware of how problematic it is.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
LikeLike
It’s a very, rare sighting for the Dayton Daily News education reporter to write an article about charter schools that doesn’t quote Chad Aldis, of Fordham. Is it best practice, for a journalist to have, only one, go-to source for a frequently-reported topic? If it is, wouldn’t a reader expect a similarly quoted source on the other side? The latter is an unfulfilled expectation.
A recent article about the documented failure of Ohio vouchers, quoted Aldis. He wasn’t quoted making a false statement about a research finding related to competition. Bizarrely, the ODE spokesperson, who was quoted (and, the reporter) cited the unsubstantiated finding that was, oddly listed, in the forward, written by Fordham.
LikeLike
Average adjusted gross income, 200K+ A, 40K- F. A’s for the rich, F’s for the poor, in their jived up world of mismeasure.
LikeLike
You’ve got it. The assault on public ed is just one front of the class war.
Standardized tests are most correlated with affluence. So let’s keep using them as a measure of success, and gatekeeper of opportunity — says the most affluent.
Charter schools most serve the higher class interest, not “poor kids.” So, they should get the A’s, even if they don’t.
Whoever has the power to design the evaluation system can design it in their own personal/group best interest.
Evaluation is a great tool for those at the top of a hierarchy, to keep themselves at the top and everyone else in their (lower) place.
Just as teachers use grades to keep students compliant to norms, and keep them in a certain place, for better or worse.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, class war exactly: an each year more frightening class war where the poorest and lowest scoring can now be separated out for incarceration in an ever more lucrative jail cell. Our country now pays out so much more to incarcerate than educate, it doesn’t make sense for profiteers to NOT find ways to push bodies out of schools and into prisons.
LikeLike
So the charter grades were worse than the public school grades, but the Fordham puppet “defended the grades and said they probably show how bad the public schools are.” I don’t get it. Even when they use their own weapons which backfire on themselves, they still take it out on the public schools. I just can’t.
LikeLike
Newspapers deserve to lose 99% of their readers. Fordham, is never identified with its source of funding -the Waltons. If people from unions are quoted, they are identified as such, making their funding transparent. But, organizations like Fordham skip through articles, and no journalist points out that its funders (the richest 0.1%), don’t live, don’t send kids to school and, don’t pay taxes in our communities.
Integrity vacated journalism. Reporters should be made to pay for their complicity in creating American feudalism.
LikeLike