Grading idea flunks

Editorial by Durham Herald-Sun, December 18, 2014.

In our continuing debate over how well our public schools serve our children and the community, politicians and others obsess over ways to gauge schools’ performance and compare one to another.

The inclination is understandable.  Education consumes a considerable portion of our tax money, and many reasonably question whether we are getting what we pay for. Over the years, numerous studies and reports – ranging from the academic to the fiercely partisan – have sounded alarms.  The overall picture is pretty clear – many students get a good to excellent education in many schools. Too many students, however, emerge from too many schools inadequately prepared to continue their education or to find gainful employment in the modern economy. Some emerge barely able to read and write, sadly.

But the underlying reasons are complex. Students – and schools – that perform off the charts may do so because of outstanding teachers. Or the teaching staff may have the benefit of motivated students with parents who are affluent, highly educated and acutely involved in their children’s education.

On the other hand, schools where student performance is dismal may have teachers who are poorly prepared, unmotivated or, at worst, just plain lazy and incompetent. Or those schools may have teachers as passionate and skillful as any, but who are laboring to overcome the pathology of poverty, low expectations and inspiration from those who are raising the children, or both.

More likely is that a school faces a swirling blend of factors. Children from economically challenged households may have parents who instill in them the benefits and joy of learning. School leadership with a laser-like focus on kids and inspirational teachers may knock over all the obstacles raised by homes in tumult, deprivation or both.

Given those complexities – and many more – the effort to summarize a school’s performance in a handful of metrics is difficult. It can be done, but the more we try to streamline it into a few numbers, the more we miss in understanding the overall picture.

That’s what makes the legislature’s mandate, passed in 2012 but not yet implemented, to assign a single letter grade to a school seem misguided. We think that kind of stark single-character assessment is a bit simplistic when assessing movies or restaurant meals. It certainly is addled when applied to a complex institution like a school.

Durham’s school board Thursday joined many others across the state in calling for a reset. It asks the state in concert with local systems to “develop an alternative grading system which can be used to give parents and taxpayers a truer vision of the performance of our schools.”

That is a proposal that deserves an A.

http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/editorials/x1736889605/Grading-idea-flunks