I have said it before, and I will say it again. Giving letter grades to schools is stupid. How would you feel if your child came home from school with only a single letter grade? If you are a parent, you would be furious. Rightly so. Every child has strengths and weaknesses, is good at this, not so good at that, getting better at this, not interested in that. Can you sum up a child as an A child, a B child, a C child, a D child or an F child? I don’t think so.
Yet, following the bad ideas spun out of Jeb Bush’s brain, red states have adopted the letter grading strategy for entire schools. Schools that have strengths and weaknesses, areas in which they are doing magnificently, and areas where they can improve. Every school consists of millions of moving parts, yet the letter grade assumes that a single letter can sum up the school. This is truly stupid.
Reporter Lily Altadena spent time in a D rated junior high school in Arizona. What she describes is a good school with a good principal, and students who are doing their best to do better. Yet the school was rated a D. The principal is heartbroken. The school is her baby. The children are her children. Yet the school is stigmatized as a D school. What will parents think? Will they pull their children out and send them to the fly-by-night charter school down the street or across town? Will the school fall into a death spiral?
The letter grades correlate with the school’s affluence or poverty. In effect, the school is punished because it enrolls too many high-poverty students.
Only an idiot or a malevolent fool would subject schools to this kind of cruel judgment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would give a solid F to anyone who tries to apply letter grades to schools.
No surprises for me. I would love to teach in a school like this one.
“The letter grades correlate with the school’s affluence or poverty. In effect, the school is punished because it enrolls too many high-poverty students.”
Eighty percent of the students at the high school where I taught the last 16 years of the 30 years I was a public school teacher was ranked 3 on a scale of 10 in California. One year, when that rank was published in California’s newspapers, my students laughed at us teachers for being failed teachers.
I quieted them down and then explained that the score they were laughing at was the one they earned from the average of the standardized test scores they earned. It had little to do with how we taught and/or what we taught. But it had everything to do with what they learned and I reminded them that about 5 percent of the students I taught bothered to do the homework that was essential to learning what they were being tested for. I pointed out all the hardcore gangbangers with the waistline of their pants hanging far below their crotch revealing lots of boxer short fabric that never bought a textbook to class or did even the classwork. I reminded them of all the students in each class that finished tests that should have taken hours to complete in minutes so they could finish and return to filling empty sheets of paper with their gang signs.
I told them that less than three miles from our high school was a high school that ranked a 9 on that scale of 10 and if we swapped students and not teachers, then Nogales would have that score of 9 because that highs school wasn’t plagued by multi-generational gangs and child poverty.
I pointed out that our HS offered after-school tutoring until 5 PM every day but few students that NEEDED that help ever went because after the final bell, they didn’t have to go. Instead, they rushed home to hang out with friends and mess around or play video games or watch TV.
I pointed out that reading books outside of school hours was important to raise those test scores and that many of them were often vocal in class about how much they hated to read and never read.
No one was making fun of me and the other teachers or laughing when it was done. Every student in my classes looked ashamed … but my speech didn’t erase the poverty that created the toxic environment those children were growing up in and few if any of them changed their habits when it came to learning in school.
In fact, I considered it a great victory if even one of those many students decided to change their ways and do what it took to learn, and I valued the few students that did work hard to learn and there were always a few in every class. The challenges are many for teachers in high poverty schools and I know that the reason that I give it my all was for the few that changed their ways and the few that started out being great students. I owed it to those few to always do my best as their teacher even if most of the students I struggled to teach didn’t.
I wonder, all those students who never did their homework or classwork or read a book – what grades were they getting, from you and other teachers?
Gruff,
This is a sneering insulting comment. I edited most of it. I don’t want you on my blog to insult teachers. I will continue to delete your nasty comments. You don’t insult me and you don’t insult the teaching profession. Not here.
It is my Blog, and I decide what gets posted.
“How would you feel if your child came home from school with only a single letter grade?”
They already do except it’s not a “letter” grade but a number grade. It’s called the GPA, a conglomerate of differing assessments from different subject areas that may or may not (usually the latter) not have much in common in determining said letter grades.
The number grade of the GPA is nothing more than the letter grades converted to a number. It’s all the same difference. And it’s all onto-epistemologically invalid as a descriptor of human abilities, capabilities, work, thinking, etc. . . . Or as we say out here in the countryside of rural Missouri “It’s all a bunch of bullshit!”
Stupidity has taken hold of our country, in one way or another.
“Yet the school is stigmatized as a D school.”
No, the school is not “stigmatized as a D school”. The faculty and staff may not like the label, hell who would?, but it shows the problem of falsely labeling the student, teachers and/or school with a letter grade. The grade is supposed to be a description of the myriad interactions of the whole milieu of all involved. As such the label of “D” cannot be “attached to” or “placed upon” the participants. It should be used to describe the interactions not the participants. Wilson pointed out this particular onto-epistemological fallacy in the most important educational writing in the last 50 years “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error.” No one has ever refuted or rebutted what Wilson proved about all the errors and fallacies involved with the standards and testing regime.
And probably the most damning thing about the standards and testing malpractices is that the students internalize those labels and are negatively affected for the rest of their lives believing that, since the authorities-school, teachers, etc. . . , have proclaimed them to be a D or F student or a “not proficient” (meaning stupid).
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.” (From my summary of and commentary on Wilson’s dissertation)
Keep preachin’ it, brother.
Hi Duane, do you have “epistemological” on a hot button?
That’s onto-epistemological to you, Gruff! 🙂
That’s onto-epistemological to you, Gruff! 🙂
Do you have anything to add to the discussion?
Nah, flows freely from the fingertips!
Just to be clear, I was asking Gruff, not Duane if he(?) has anything to contribute. Duane has contributed and continues to contribute plenty.
Sorry, Dienne, but Gruff is in moderation and I have deleted his replies because he continues to lash out at teachers. He behaves like an angry troll. I have enough trolls already.
KIno Junior High suffers from a rigid, score driven evaluation system that does not account for impact that poverty has on young people. This one-size-fits all rating system works against the students and teachers who are doing a great job. School communities are complex structures that cannot be defined by a single letter grade. Just like IQ tests and all other standardized test scores are biased against the poor, Kino is underrated because they are being judged by a tool that is designed to favor middle class students. The students at Kino do not lead middle class lives, Their parents cannot help them too much, and their families struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Some of these students are food and housing insecure. When families are engaged in meeting primary needs, education takes a back seat. This is the reality of most of the Kino students, and no amount of biased evaluation is going to change this.
Yes to all of the above. I would recommend the book “Mission High,” about a high school in San Francisco with high poverty, low scores, and yet children show up, many graduate, and many go to college.
The mandarins who create the tests have no idea what struggles many of our families endure. And then when you factor in the middle class darlings who have figured out that the test scores don’t count on their grades (so they blow off the test), it’s a miracle any schools have decent scores.
I retired three years ago. I enjoy hearing from former students and I miss the classroom and a few colleagues–but nothing else.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Before little dan force an A-F system on the schools in Texas I wrote the following points fo disagreement.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/the-scarlet-letter-again/
I just have read the article. Such a hilarity. They argue with A-F ranking, but come up with other ranking system. Berliner even wants to include the number of kids who were accepted in colleges, into the new ranking. What happened to school fostering the civic spirit and communal philosophy and stuff like that? I thought that “college prep” was a disparaging moniker for schools, where kids get good grades on tests and are accepted into higher ed institutions.
Oh, and the kids spending their days in front of the screens, testing, re-testing, pre-testing, prepping for a next day… Such an inspiring environment.