Does this school deserve an A, a B, or a C?
Today we dig into the perennial debate over judging schools by achievement, growth, or both. Plus: more NAEP takes and some (appropriate) handwringing over our “post-literate society” and escalating enrollment declines.
One correction from Friday: I published a bad link to Bruno Manno’s excellent post on teaching optimism. The right one is here.
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Last week, the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board looked into claims by the Mikes (Mike Miles and Mike Morath) about the many Space City schools going from D’s or F’s to A’s and B’s on the state report card, thanks to the sweeping reforms undertaken in the district. In case you hit the paywall (like I did), let me provide a longish excerpt:
When state-appointed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles told city council members Wednesday that no child walked into an F-rated school, that was great news. And when he added that 70,000 more students walked into A-and B-rated schools this year, that was also great news....
The district has touted big gains in the past without always being transparent about some of the fine print. That seems to be the case here again....
See, in Texas, every public school receives an A–F grade that’s mostly derived from how the students perform on standardized state tests.... But a school can earn an A for tremendous year-over-year growth, even if the overall scores are still below average. Which seems to be the case for Valley West Elementary, a largely Hispanic and Black school in southwest Houston, which went from an F to an A in a single year....
Even though Valley West earned an A for academic progress, its actual test scores only earned a C, or 74 out of 100.
Just fewer than half of third graders were reading on or above grade level, according to the test’s scoring. And only 35 percent of third graders were performing on grade level in math.
If you can read the whole article, you’ll see that the Chronicle appears to be confused about how growth is calculated (it’s at the student level, not with year-over-year gains in proficiency rates by schools).
Still, the editorial reflects a real concern that I’ve heard time and again from many reformers. Namely, that by focusing mostly on growth, we end up praising schools with very low proficiency rates, like Valley West, with its 35 percent proficiency in third grade math.
I don’t mind that because I understand that growth, done right, is the fairest measure of a school’s effectiveness. By controlling for students’ prior achievement, growth metrics like “value-added” can focus entirely on what’s under schools’ control—rather than what might have happened before kids got to them. This is why the best growth measures show little to no relationship with students’ socioeconomic demographics, whereas achievement measures are highly correlated with those background characteristics.
But life is full of trade-offs, and we can’t get around them here. Either we’re willing to celebrate schools that boast high growth but low achievement, or we tell high poverty schools that they have no chance of getting A grades no matter how amazing they do at helping kids make progress from one year to the next. A middle school whose sixth graders enter at the third-grade level can help them make two years of progress over the course of just one year, but when those kids are seventh graders, they will still be below grade level and far below proficiency. But that middle school is doing a fantastic job!
If we’re going to rate schools—and keep in mind that the majority of states, and all but two blue states, don’t, at least not with A–F or five-star rating systems—we have four choices, as I see it:
We embrace the Texas model, give every school one grade for achievement and another grade for growth, and then use the higher of the two grades as their final, official grade.
We turn Texas’ model on its head by giving every school grades for achievement and growth, but then use the lower of the two grades as the final, official grade. To get an A, schools would have to crush on achievement and growth.
We smoosh grades together by giving every school grades for achievement and growth (and perhaps other factors, as well), and then blend them all together into a final grade. This is how Ohio’s five-star ratings system works.
We skip the overall rating and just give schools a grade for achievement and a grade for growth—and leave it at that. (I’m not aware of any state going this route. Are you?)
Depending on our choice, Valley West could get an A (option #1), a B (option #3), or a C (option #2). Or an A and a C (option #4).
I find option #1 to be most appealing. It motivates high-poverty schools by indicating to them that they can earn an A with a strong showing on growth, while also rewarding high-achievement schools (which tend to be found in the affluent suburbs). It focuses states’ attention on the truly bad schools, the “Double F’s.”
But yes, it means giving A grades to some schools with very few kids reading or doing math on grade level. I’m OK with that. Are you?
Which option do you find most compelling? Are there others I’m not considering? Please weigh in!
More NAEP takes
Uber-blogger Matt Yglesias gives us a lesson in click-baity headlines with his analysis of the NAEP scores, while name-checking Chad Aldeman, David Zweig, and Karen Vaites and linking to analyses by EmpowerK12 and Go Beyond Grades. He does manage to find a silver lining in the District of Columbia’s post-pandemic bounce-back.
ExcelinEd’s assessment-and-accountability guru Christy Hovanetz takes to Governing Magazine to compel policymakers to adopt proven strategies in the wake of the disastrous NAEP scores, including more time for math and an embrace of the science of reading.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page writes up last week’s CRPE report on persistent math declines, as does Holly Korbey.
Takes on other topics
Shaka Mitchell posts his Congressional testimony from last week, making a strong case for private school choice based on the most promising studies of recent years.
Speaking of school choice, in the wake of a massive pro-charter rally in New York City (which already sparked a backlash from the left, according to the New York Times), the New York Post wonders why Zohran Mamdani opposes charter schools, given that they provide “affordable excellence” to working-class families.
Kerry McDonald, an unschooler, micro-schooling advocate, and author of Joyful Learning, was aghast when her daughter wanted to go to their town’s large public high school. But as an advocate of school choice, she came around and wants all parents to be able to pick the best environment for their kids.
And Tim DeRoche thinks that public school choice—including across district lines—could be a way to keep some schools open in the face of enrollment declines.
Dan Buck explains “how to reform schools of education” by “correcting the existing institutions or building separate ones” (while almost apologizing for not treating them as “a kitten that ought to be drowned”).
The Trump Administration plans to make the U.S. citizenship exam harder, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page is here for it—and wants American high schoolers to be able to pass it, too.
Speaking of high schoolers, Jeffrey Selingo shows that the most selective colleges aren’t necessarily the most engaging ones, and also says the admissions game is still rigged. (Did anyone think it wasn’t?)
Finally, Rick Hess bemoans the “illiberal response” to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, including by some schools and colleges.
A former young-earth creationist argues that science education plays a key role in building public trust and fostering dialogue. “When my science worldview and my home-centered worldview came into conflict, it was the curiosity and nature pieces that led me to dig deeper, both into science and my faith.” —Amanda L. Townley, Education Week
“If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.” —James Marriott, Cultural Capital (Substack)
“Even if families return to their pre-pandemic enrollment patterns, the population decline would mean 2.2 million fewer public school students by 2050. But if parents keep choosing other kinds of schools at the pace observed since 2020, traditional public schools could lose as many as 8.5 million students, shrinking from 43.06 million in 2023–24 to as few as 34.57 million by mid-century.” —Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
Option 4, then make sure parents know what each means and can filter by them.
Or we could not rate schools at all and use a more comprehensive analysis, rather than trying to jam the effectiveness of a complex system into a single letter of the alphabet. Letter grades don't accurately reflect the scope of learning for individual students, so they certainly cannot encompass the effectiveness of a school.
"...or we tell high poverty schools that they have no chance of getting A grades no matter how amazing they do at helping kids make progress from one year to the next."
That's a tad fatalistic, no? Not to say they have provided a blueprint for effective replication, but 90-90-90 schools do, in fact, exist.