Opinion: Don’t be duped by the farce of A-F school ratings

The Texas Education Agency this week released a preliminary work-in-progress report for the new A-F accountability rating system for school districts and campuses.

Athens ISD Communications Coordinator Toni Garrard Clay wrote the following opinion piece in response.

By Toni Garrard Clay

Well, here we are. Servants of the public school system have been braced for months for the gut punch known as “A through F school ratings” to be thrown, courtesy of the 84th Texas State Legislature. The blow has finally landed, and we’re left dazed and wondering why.

Imagine you work tirelessly performing well at a job to which you feel called, while your boss tells everyone you’re a failure, demands you do more with less, and threatens to use part of your salary to pay contractors whose work won’t be reviewed. That’s the plight of schools located in the most challenging educational environments, and the new A-F system only makes it worse.

This isn’t baseless whining. Research conducted on existing A-F systems — which assigns single letter grades to schools and districts — has provided an almost universal conclusion: they fail as indicators of school quality. The argument for these systems is that they’re simple and easy to understand. And, sure, simple is good. Unless it’s wrong.

Put plainly, this ratings system punishes poor districts for being poor and rewards rich districts for being rich because, among other things, it fails to take into consideration external forces no school can control. It’s useless as a tool for performance because the computations behind the “simple” grades are mind-numbingly complex. It “simplifies” an immensely complicated subject in the way a child might pull a blown spark plug from a train engine and declare the whole thing broken.

The most egregious flaw in the A-F system, I believe, is its failure to take into account the reality that student performance is always impacted by factors which cannot and should not be attributed to schools. The primary example of this is poverty. Sadly, poverty has a huge negative impact on the access to literacy and numeracy practice and support a child has outside of school. Kids in schools serving poor neighborhoods, therefore, score well beneath kids in schools serving wealthier neighborhoods. The only fair comparison between those two types of schools is to compare only the scores of students with similar economic realities. A-F does not do this. And, as a result, its ratings are terribly skewed. This has been documented repeatedly in states already using A-F.

Oklahoma has a system much like the one Texas is introducing. A research team in Oklahoma examined their state’s data and found no difference in how average students performed in C, D or F schools compared to average students in A or B schools. However, there was a big difference in average household income among those schools. In 2013, 85 percent of students in Oklahoma’s D schools were socio/economically disadvantaged — compared to 33 percent of students in its A schools. Similar findings resulted from analyses conducted in North Carolina, Maine and New Mexico. These school ratings reflect economics, not instruction.

The new school rating system in Texas will not “officially” be implemented until the 2017-2018 school year. But the law required the Texas Education Agency to submit a report on Jan. 1, 2017, indicating the ratings that schools and districts would have been given if the system had been in place the previous year. It is no accident of timing that the report was released just before the 85th Legislative Session opens. No doubt we will see it rolled up like a newspaper and brandished by certain legislators as “proof” that schools are failing. They will tell us the solution is to divert public monies from already underfunded public schools to support private and charter schools. Don’t be duped.

Thankfully, our district has the benefit of a state representative, Lance Gooden, and a senator, Robert Nichols, who are attentive to the needs and concerns of the public schools they represent. Sadly, this is not the case among all our lawmakers. We must lift our voices in unity until a chorus can be heard clearly in Austin: Judge schools fairly. Fund schools fairly. Give them credit for success.

Should public schools be held accountable for performance? Yes, absolutely. A fair, accurate and reliable accountability system provides an invaluable tool to educators. Make no mistake, though, this A-F system is a farce. What is real is that Athens ISD and the many fine school districts we serve alongside will continue in our dedication to provide students of all backgrounds and capabilities with the highest level of education possible.

Toni Garrard Clay is the communications coordinator for Athens ISD and the daughter of retired school teachers. She previously served as a legislative aide in Austin. Credit for much of the information cited here is given to John Tanner, author of “The A-F Accountability Mistake,” available online.

One thought on “Opinion: Don’t be duped by the farce of A-F school ratings”

  1. I agree that poor districts have a high hurdle to overcome. But I’m not sure that makes the system unfair. No family would choose to sent their children to a ‘D or F’ school if they had an option. Nowhere is it disputed tha higher ranking districts better prepair children for college and or a trade. The task is to overcome the hurdle not claim unfair and settle for a low rating.

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