Audrey Amrein-Beardsley is an education scholar who specializes in smoking out quack reforms, like the “value-added” accountability measures used to judge teacher quality.
In this post, She investigates whether the 13 states that grade states with a single letter grade of A-F achieve higher scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress after implementing this strategy.
Jeb Bush initiated the idea of giving schools a single letter grade.
I have long believed that it was a singularly stupid idea. If your child came home from school with a report card that contained only one letter grade, you as a parent would be outraged. No individual child is an A or B or C or D or F. She may be great in math but weak in science, average in reading but excellent in art or history.
If it’s wrong to give a single letter grade to one child, it is ludicrous to give a single letter grade to an institution that has hundreds of students, staff, programs, etc.
Amrein-Beardsley concluded:
In reality, how these states performed post-implementation is not much different from random, or a flip of the coin. As such, these results should speak directly to other states already, or considering, investing human and financial resources in such state-level, test-based accountability policies.
In short, this is a costly and useless school reform policy that benefits no one.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unfortunately, school grades helped an entire industry: real estate. Since parents, presumably, want the ‘best’ schools for their children, real estate is at a premium price in ‘A’ school areas. Who knew that school board candidates were vetted through the NE FL Builders’ Association here in JAX?
exposing the larger, overarching goals of Big Money city planners: control the school board, control the city
The A to F grading system of schools is about as reliable as a coin toss. In other words, they are a bogus tool of “reform” that states seeking truth should ignore. Jeb Bush is a festering boil on the back of public schools across the country. He is the puppet master behind the multitude of bad ideas in Florida. Texas was lucky to unload this untalented Bush on Florida which, unfortunately, is dumb enough to follow his lead.
Actually, at least in Utah, one could line up the schools by socioeconomic status and then put the grades for A on the wealthy schools and F on the poor schools. They almost completely line up.
I wish Utah would just do it that way. Save tons of time and money, and tell everyone what the tests really “show.”
This is just the logical end of the economist’s eternal endeavor to reduce human beings to a single number (or equivalently, single letter)
It’s actually dumb on its face. No statistical analysis required to reach that conclusion.
If the people who do this stuff had any clue whatsoever, they would actually be embarrassed by the garbage they produce on a regular basis. But they have no clue do they have no embarrassment and no shame.
Again, the profound irony that the practitioners of this numerology describe what they do as “data-driven accountability”
All that this does is drive real estate prices higher/lower. We have A-F grades in MD (started this year). Howard County, MD has the most segregated schools in the state with lots of A’s and B’s. Next most segregated schools are Montgomery County with lots of A’s and B’s. Sadly, the A’s and B’s don’t mean that our children are receiving a great education. Our kids get tons of test prep curriculum aligned to the stupid PARCC tests that we use. But this has been going on for years because our state has been very test centric since NCLB took affect.
We got NCLB compliments of the other Bush brother. The Bushes have been a blight on public education. Perhaps George was setting a profitable stage for little brother, Jeb.
One would think that Laura or Barbara would have talked to “the boys” when they were walking down this road of “reform”?
The Bushes are a blight on every thing and every one they have ever impacted. Thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands (John’s Hopkins researchers estimate a million) of people around the world are DEAD because of their single-minded pursuit of power.
It’s just an excuse to privatize and deregulate schools, suppress unions, and further enrich the already rich. They’re not just reducing human beings to a single number; they’re reducing whole neighborhoods of human beings to a single number. Yes, it’s nonsense. It’s like grading rainforest ecosystems with a single number. Derp! Who is the dumbest person in history? School grades are as dumb as that guy. Bush, Gates, Coleman… are not just NOT geniuses; they are intellectually challenged, as is anyone who believes their bunkum. And don’t get me started on the lack of test score validity in the first place.
Alas, any explanation of THAT will be rather long, and no one will read it or bother to follow the argument.
This is a problem.
“And don’t get me started on the lack of test score validity in the first place.”
Speaking of test score invalidity. . .
A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
Yep, you guessed it, it’s from Noel Wilson!
To answer the question of the post:
Who cares?
Good question.
Not incidentalky, school grades are often BASED on test scores.
And trying to test the Deformers ridiculous claims statistically/scientifically is a lot like chasing rabbits my backyard. Where the rabbit ends up is almost completely random, but is that surprising?
And that randomness of movement by the rabbit helps in surviving the many predators that would love to have it for dinner.
Just think if all the rabbits ran in a standardized fashion. Wouldn’t be any left very quickly, eh!