Time to Grade the School Board?

The following, written with co-authors Phil and Joan Harris, appeared as a guest column in the Bloomington, Indiana, Herald-Times, on October 9, 2013.

The 45th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released recently. The annual poll is one way of “grading” our nation’s public education system according to the public it serves. A majority of the public (58%), for example, rejects using student test scores to evaluate teachers, and even more (78%) aren’t convinced that increased testing helps school performance. The poll is a thoughtful, well-researched, respected mechanism for gauging what the public thinks is right and wrong about America’s schools. Too bad we don’t have a localized tool to do the same.

Indiana instituted an A-to-F grading system for schools that proved to be corruptible. Even before the Tony Bennett grade-changing scandal, the best that could be said of this “system” is that it fails to say anything meaningful about the quality of public education. It is simplistic and mischaracterizes school quality.

The A-F scheme merely tells us what we already know—and ignore—about the effects of poverty on education. Researchers have identified common poverty-related factors that significantly affect children’s health and learning, and thus limit what schools can accomplish. Factors include inadequate medical, dental, and vision care; food insecurity; and substandard living environments. These and related factors correlate to many poverty-induced 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 has the effect of holding down those whom it purports to lift up. “Failing” schools almost invariably have large numbers of students from impoverished backgrounds. Such schools often are not failing but merely fighting an uphill battle that cannot be easily won.

Let’s admit, then, that grading schools in this way is really about labeling communities and keeping the poor in their place. Ask any realtor whether an F school is likely to encourage higher home prices. The effect of A-F labeling—not actually evaluating—schools simply stamps “POOR” on the neighborhood and perpetuates problems.

What can we do? Maybe it’s time we evaluated our local school trustees. We might choose to evaluate them simplistically, the way the A-F system does schools. We could use superficial factors, such as meeting attendance, number of school visits, minutes spent with administrators, and so forth. Or we might model our evaluation on what we have learned really matters in public education:

• Does the school board evaluate this community’s schools based on this community’s values, needs, and circumstances, rather than generalized, simplistic state criteria?
• Are school board meetings truly open, and are community members encouraged to participate meaningfully? Do our school trustees really listen and respond?
• Do our school trustees work with education experts to understand programs and projects fully in order to allocate public dollars where they are needed and will achieve real results?
• Is professional knowledge and public input the driving force behind school board decisions? Do school trustees set politics aside?
• How is our school board working to change bad education policies—national, state, or local—that negatively affect our children and their teachers?
• What is our school board doing to mitigate the effects of poverty in the schooling of our children? Are our school trustees honestly working to level the education playing field?

These are tough evaluation questions. They are not yes-no, check-the-box questions that are easy to answer but tell us nothing we don’t already know. We, the public, want real answers. The only way to get them is to ask real questions.

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.