The Utah State Board of Education recently released a system that grades public and charter schools across the state. The system gives schools a letter grade ranging from A to F — the same letter grades these schools give to their students. Seems fair and rational. Certainly, our public and charter schools couldn’t and wouldn’t object to a practice they famously employ themselves.
Well, not quite. In fact, the ones most upset by this practice of grades are the educators themselves, which is why Utah schools deserve the system in the first place. Grades are necessary and may even improve the level of education within these schools.
The Utah Education Association and the Utah School Boards Association are leading the charge against this practice calling it unfair and perhaps even a ploy by Utah legislators to drive support away from public schools. “It demoralizes teachers, and it is not an accurate picture of most of our schools,” said Peggy Jo Kennett, president of the Utah School Boards Association.
“We’re not an ‘F’ school, we’re an ‘A’ school with all we’re doing with kids,” said West High School Principal Parley Jacobs, whose school earned an ‘F’ grade with the new system.
But it’s hard to really quantify how this new grading system is so wrong. The system grades high schools primarily on test scores and graduation rates. It offers points for the average standardized test scores of each school’s students as well as how much the students have improved each year. Next year, the system will take into account the average ACT scores of graduating seniors.
The grades offer an evaluation of performance based on objective metrics (such as test scores) that schools use on their own students. Sure, the grades don’t take into consideration the great environments in the school, their physical education classes or how engaged the students are in classrooms. But then again, the grades students earn don’t take into account their great sense of humor, how good they look in jeans or their compassionate natures.
The grading system is incomplete, and we understand this. But they are important ways of measuring objective performance in individuals and institutions. Schools are some of the first ones to recognize this nature of grades. The fact that so many educators are suddenly taking offense to being graded themselves is worrisome and should be taken seriously.
This isn’t to say this new grading system is perfect. There are many ways to improve the measurement of objective performance in schools. There should be serious discussion about this — but not about whether or not schools should be measured in the first place.
This new grading system offers a form of transparency in schools that is sorely needed in Utah. It will help parents and community leaders more accurately measure their schools and the ways they need to improve. People will demand that their schools strive for an “A” grade, and this is exactly the kind of standard our public and charter schools need.