While we must continue to work to improve all student’s performance we should not allow teachers to be vilified or given “F” grades because they choose to teach in high minority, high poverty schools.
Letter Grade Accountability Policy
BESE, ignoring the process recommended by a committee of state superintendents and the Accountability Commission, adopted a letter grade accountability policy for schools and districts across the state. The letter grade system would replace the “star” labeling system as a statutory requirement set forth by Act 718 (passed in 2010).
This new system will reflect school and district performance by assigning a letter grade to each public elementary and secondary school and district. Similar to “No Child Left Behind,” every Louisiana school should reach and sustain the highest achievement mark of 120 by 2014.
The system must be based, in part, on growth in student achievement using a value-added assessment model and would use the following scale:
A = schools with a 120 SPS
B = schools with a 105 to 119.9 SPS
C = schools with a 90.0 to 104.9 SPS
D = schools with a 64.0 to 89.9 SPS
F = school with 64.9 and below
The process, recommended by Superintendent Pastorek, would limit the information provided on school demographics and instead focus on one extremely limited part of school/district performance.
Leave it to Louisiana’s education leaders to make a direct letter grading scale so messy and confusing.
Of course, state lawmakers and Governor Jindal had a hand in the problem, suggesting that it’s a straightforward task to grade Louisiana’s public schools - and providing little guidance on how it should be done.
It seems like a great idea: Assign a letter grade from “A” to “F” for the nearly 1,300 schools so parents can understand what type of education their children are receiving.
The idea is where simplicity ends. The road to BESE determining how to assign grades got wrapped up in issues of poverty, performance improvements and the other struggles that face school superintendents, principals and teachers every day.
Should a school be rewarded for how much it improved its students’ achievement rates? Should the school be given a better grade even if its overall results still show a large percentage of students performing below their grade level and the state’s standards? Is it fair for a school in a poor neighborhood, where family economic opportunities may be limited and students may not get basic reading training before they enter school, be graded against a school in a wealthier neighborhood where more students start off with greater advantages?
If you curve the system, will it really provide any useful information to parents and will it meet the intent of what lawmakers and the governor wanted out of the grading scale?
Does a letter grading system in some cases discount the strides a school is making or the hard work its teachers are doing? Could it damage morale and make it harder for a lower-graded school to attract strong teachers and education leaders?
Under the current system (as adopted by BESE), no standard school would receive an “A grade” only magnet schools or choice schools would fall into the top category (perhaps that is why so many charter schools refuse to accept poverty and minority children). In fact six of the top ten performing school districts in the state would have no “A schools,” those districts try to educate all students and do not have magnet programs. Perhaps even worse, the A-F system distorts information.
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