A to F: Failing Our Schools

The best that can be said of awarding A to F grades to schools is that this so-called system consistently fails to say anything meaningful about the quality of public education. It is simplistic and vastly mischaracterizes school quality. A lot worse can be said, too.

The claim, still on view on the Indiana Department of Education website, that this spurious system is a “model [that] holds schools and corporations to higher standards and provides a more accurate picture of their performance by incorporating student academic growth and graduation rates, as well as college and career readiness, as measures of success” is sheer nonsense.

For the most part, the A-F scheme merely reifies what we already know—and ignore—about the effects of poverty on education. Researcher David Berliner*, for example, identifies common poverty-related factors that significantly affect children’s health and learning, and thus limit what schools can accomplish: 1) low birth weight and nongenetic prenatal influences; 2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often because of little or no medical insurance; 3) food insecurity; 4) environmental pollutants related to substandard living environments; 5) family relations and family stress; and 6) neighborhood characteristics. These factors correlate to many poverty-induced physical, sociological, and psychological problems that children bring to school and manifest in issues such as attention disorders, absenteeism, linguistic delays, and bad behavior.

Given what we know and ignore about the influence of poverty on “student academic growth and graduation rates,” the A-F scheme is draconian, having the effect not of improving schools but, to the contrary, holding down those whom it aims to lift up. So-called failing schools are almost invariably those with large numbers of students from impoverished backgrounds. Ask any realtor whether an F school is likely to encourage higher home prices. Go ahead. Ask. The effect of labeling—not actually assessing the quality of—schools as “failing” simply stamps “Poor” on the neighborhood. And that’s the way the corporatist bureaucrats want to keep it.

This is important stuff: the manipulation of public education to serve the ends of corporatist greed and societal stratification under the guise of “improving” education. Indeed it was important enough for Indiana’ previous schools superintendent to falsify the grade given to a supporter’s charter school, changing it from a mediocre (and thus unacceptable) C to an A. What are friends for if they won’t lie for you, even if it results in a subsequent scandal and job loss?

Let’s admit that grading schools is really about labeling communities and ensuring that privileged enclaves remain exclusive and about keeping the poor in their place.

*David C. Berliner. “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success.” National Education Policy Center, March 9, 2009.

It's Politics

Anyone who was surprised by the news that Tony Bennett, Indiana’s former superintendent of public instruction, fudged his own school grading system to favor a heavy campaign donor’s charter school hasn’t been paying attention. Sadly, it can be put down to political corruption. The corrupting influence of politics on education is not an absolute; it may be widespread but I won’t argue that it’s pervasive. But happens whenever politicians have an agenda in place of a moral compass.

Increasingly, across the United States, decisions about what should happen in schools are being systematically taken out of the hands of parents and educators. Politicians at every level are attempting to run the nation’s schools, something most of them simply are not qualified to do. But the political exercise of ineptitude is too tempting for some to pass up, particularly if their agenda puts corporations (the “people” who fill their campaign chests and, in some cases, line their pockets) before kids.

Politicians routinely overstep their mandate, their authority, and their common sense to meddle in schools chiefly in two ways:

Offering Simplistic “Solutions” to Complex Challenges. Politicians are not educators, and educators who become politicians swim with sharks. Survival sometimes can seem to be a matter of becoming a shark. Fundamentally, then, politicians are office-holders with a limited amount of time to get done anything they want—or have promised—to accomplish. That pressure argues for simplistic solutions instead of thoughtful, complex responses to complex challenges. Tony Bennett’s A-to-F grading system is a prime example. One of my early articles, from the 1970s, dealt with designing report cards that really communicate. Forty years later, we’re still stuck with A to F. Ramping up a poor but entrenched system for sorting students as if we were sorting eggs to sort schools in the same manner was, and is, simplistic. The challenge of discerning whether individual schools are doing a good job of teaching their students and serving their community is complex and deserves thoughtful, locally driven consideration. Instead, Bennett touted a dumbed-down, top-down “system” that offered little more than a crap shoot.

Letting Money Trump Morality. Then Bennett got tripped up by his own scheme. That meant it was time to load the dice. The charter school of a major funder—one who could donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bennett’s campaign chest and did, thanks to Indiana’s nonexistent campaign-funding laws—“earned” a C. Oops! Big oops! Or as Bennett put it, according to emails obtained by the Associated Press, “Oh, crap.” So, rather than offend a big donor, Bennett parked his morals outside the door and followed the scent of money into a dark closet where he changed that C to an A. It’s all a bit circular at this point, isn’t it? By letting money trump morality, Bennett went back to the previous tactic, grasping at the simplistic solution—simply changing the grade—rather than dealing with the complex questions his mindless grading system ignores.

It would be peachy if we could just believe the old playground maxim that “cheaters never prosper.” Unfortunately, in the politics of public education, they sometimes do. Indiana voters may have booted Bennett out of office, but he wasn’t pounding the pavement looking for a new job for long. Florida’s Governor Rick Scott snapped him up to head that state’s public education system. Of course, that was before the Bennett debacle hit the proverbial fan. Right about now, Governor Scott might be thinking, “Oh, crap.” But then, it’s Florida. So maybe not.

ADDENDUM: Shortly after I posted this, news arrived that Tony Bennett had resigned his position in Florida. Governor Scott will have to find another politician to mismanage the state's schools. Novel idea: Find a real educator.