Who
would
have imagined that after the past
two tumultuous years, when so
much was written
and said
about how the impact of the COVID-19
pandemic had convinced American
parents that public schools were “failing”
institutions, that as the 2022-2023
school year begins, “Americans’
ratings of their community’s public
schools reached a new high
dating back 48 years.” That’s the stunning
finding in the highly
respected annual survey conducted by
PDK.
The
finding
aligns with a history of survey
results showing parents are
generally pleased with the public
schools their children attend. Even
during the height of the pandemic,
in 2020 and 2021, Gallup
reported that parent
satisfaction with local schools
declined
only slightly, and “more than seven
in 10 parents” still
expressed satisfaction.
Puzzling
over
this phenomenon, Chalkbeat national
reporter Matt Barnum judged
the widespread assumption of parent
dissatisfaction with local public
schools to be one among a number of
“common, fear-inducing claims
about the state of American
schooling [that] are inaccurate or
unproven.” He concluded, “It’s not
entirely clear what’s
going on.”
In
an
attempt to explain what’s going on,
education historian Jack
Schneider noted
that while most parents rate the
schools their own children attend
highly, with 70 percent assigning
their schools a grade of A or B, a
similar percentage grade schools in
general C or D.
In
considering what might be causing this
“perception gap,” Schnider
argued, “One obvious factor is the rise of a
national politics of
education.”
Indeed,
as
Schneider explained, prominent
Republicans have long made public
education a whipping post going back
to at least the presidency
of Ronald Reagan. Anti-public
education rhetoric coming from the
right has only grown more intense in
recent years.
Betsy
DeVos,
former President Donald Trump’s
Secretary of Education,
became infamous, in part, for making
disparaging
comments about public schools
and for having once called public
schools “a
dead end.”
Since
DeVos’s tenure, Republican criticism of
public education has
escalated from cryptic commentary to shrill
calls for ending the
public system altogether.
As
Amanda
Marcotte reported
for Salon, the conservative Fox News
network has for years engaged in
a campaign to convince viewers that
public schools are “a scary
place turning their grandkids into
self-loathing sexual perverts,”
all for the purpose of rolling out
its ultimate message that, “It’s
time to end public education
entirely.”
While
“conservatives
have long sought to undermine
public education” and “strip
the public treasury bare with
private
school vouchers,” wrote
Matt Gertz at Media Matters for
America, “Fox News hosts have begun
calling for the wholesale
destruction of the K-12 public
school
system.”
“Republicans
don’t
want to reform public education.
They want to end it,” read
the headline
of an article by Kathryn Joyce on
how recent education policies
enacted by Florida Governor Ron
DeSantis, including crackdowns on
public school social studies
curriculum and expansions of the
state’s
voucher program, are “a naked attack
on the very existence of
public schools” that is “piloting a
new education ideology for
Republicans.”
So,
obviously, when one of two major political
parties conducts a
decades-long, scorched earth campaign to
disparage, and even call for
the destruction of public schools, it’s
little wonder that a fairly
large percentage of parents might have
widespread negative
perceptions of schools, regardless of what
their own experiences have
been.
But
Schneider
went on to explain that, “The
biggest factor shaping the
perception divide, however, may be
data.” By “data,” what
Schneider meant was the readily
available and widely publicized
standardized achievement test scores
that come from annual tests that
are mandated by the federal
government since the passage of No
Child Left Behind in 2002. The
scores, which are widely reported,
can leave those with little training
in how to interpret them a
perception of school performance
“that is incomplete and
inaccurate,” according to Schneider.
Another
form of “data” Schneider didn’t mention that
likely plays an
outsize role in shaping public perceptions
of schools are the various
school accountability systems that states
now employ to rank and
grade schools and districts. These school
rating systems draw heavily
from the test scores Schneider spotlighted
and often combine them
with other data, such as graduation and
student suspension rates,
into a single score or letter grade.
Critics
of
these accountability systems say
they are “misleading,”
“confusing,”
or that they mostly reflect
student demographics rather
than genuine school performance.
Although
it’s
not yet clear how these ratings will
be affected by the impact
of COVID, at least one state, North
Carolina, has reported
that since the state resumed its
ratings, after suspending them
during the height of COVID-19
infections, an additional 543
schools
slid into D- or F-rated status.
Because
school ratings are highly visible, they can
exert a strong influence
on public perceptions of schools, whether or
not they represent
accurate assessments of school performance.
And a closer look at
these systems shows how they work to
discredit public schools,
especially those serving low-income and
minority students, and often
help to further political agendas rather
than guide good policy
decisions.
More
Than a Score
Although
No
Child Left Behind was rewritten in
2015, its replacement,
the Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA), requires that each state
establish a school accountability
rating system that differentiates
schools based on a number of
performance indicators and use this
information to identify schools that
need improvement.
While
each
state can design its own report
card, these
rating systems share a common
feature: They collapse multiple
school performance measures into a
summative rating.
Some
rating
systems employ five-scale schemes,
such as A-F grades or 5
stars. Others use a composite index
scale (such as, 1-100 ratings) or
“descriptive” rankings that, for
example, range from “exemplary
school” to “lowest performing.”
California’s rating system,
which is unique because it displays
multiple indicators on a
“dashboard,”
does not include an overall
summative rating for each school,
but it
does include summative ratings for
each of the indicators it tracks.
On
the surface, summative ratings are
attractive as a policy instrument
because they appear to provide concise and
easily understood measures
of school quality.
However,
collapsing various indicators into a
composite score may act to
obscure a great deal of information about
variations in school
performance. It can also hide a political
agenda.
Revise
the System to Make It Even Tougher
Within
the federal accountability framework, states
are allowed to design
their rating systems and make changes to
accountability formulas that
affect school ratings while not necessarily
reflecting changes in
school performance. This leeway given to the
states provides state
policy makers huge loopholes to manipulate
their ratings in ways that
radically alter results.
For
example,
after Oklahoma
initiated its first A-F school
report card system in 2011, it tweaked
the accountability formula in 2013.
The tweak led to a drastic change
in school performance grades. As a
result of the formula change,
according to a 2016
analysis, the number of C
schools in 2011-2012 dropped from 21
percent to 5 percent in 2012-2013,
and the number of F schools in
2011-2012 increased from 8 percent
to 53 percent in 2012-2013, even
though school demographics remained
similar, and average math and
reading achievement were stable.
Why
would Oklahoma lawmakers want to change the
state’s school
accountability rating to create more F-rated
schools?
An
answer
to that question perhaps emerged in
2016 after the state made
yet another change to its school
rating formula that again
drastically changed the schools’ A-F
letter grades. As the Norman
Transcript reported,
the formula change resulted in 40
percent of public schools receiving
an A or B grade, down from 57
percent in 2012, and nearly 30
percent
getting a D or F grade, compared to
8 percent in 2012, according to
an analysis by the Foundation for
Excellence in Education (FEE).
When
asked
why the sudden change occurred, FEE
policy analyst Christy
Hovanetz, said,
“The flip-flop from top performers
to under-performers reflects a
‘fairly rigorous’ grading system.”
“[L]awmakers,” she said,
“have continued to revise the system
to make it even tougher.”
Making
school
accountability systems “tougher” can
have negative
consequences for schools, especially
in Oklahoma, where schools with
grades of D or F are subject to mandatory
interventions that may include
having their staffs reconfigured,
having their management transferred
to a charter school organization,
or being shut down outright.
It’s
telling
that the policy analyst hailing the
“tougher” rating
system in Oklahoma works for FEE.
That organization, which has since
changed
its name to Excel in Ed,
according to the Center for Media
and
Democracy’s SourceWatch project, was
founded by former Florida
Governor Jeb Bush in 2008, shortly
after he finished his tenure in
office, and subsequently led by him
for a number of years.
Excel
in
Ed’s philosophy on accountability is
perhaps best summed up in a
PowerPoint
presentation
that
Hovenetz
gave to North Carolina state
lawmakers in 2019 in which she
said, “Accountability itself does
not improve student outcomes, but
the data it produces should inspire
action that will improve student
outcomes.”
While
Bush
was governor, Florida was the
first state to enact a grade
A-F school rating system, according
to the National Association of
Secondary School Principals, and
during his tenure, his
administration made a series of
changes to the
rating formula that caused vast
differences in outcomes.
During
the
early years of Florida’s new school
grading system, according
to Matt Di Carlo of the
Shanker Institute, the percentage of
schools receiving A’s rose from 12
percent of schools in 1999 to 60
percent in 2008, and there was a
significant drop in the percentage
of schools receiving grades of D or
F.
However,
Di Carlo found, “The grades changed in part
because the [rating]
criteria changed.”
Specifically,
according
to Di Carlo’s analysis, “The vast majority
of these
shifts occurred either between 1999 and
2000, or between 2001 and
2003. … This pattern is mostly a direct
result of changes to the
[rating] system in those years.”
While
there may be many plausible explanations for
why state officials in
Oklahoma and Florida would change their
states’ rating systems,
it’s undeniable that the changes could have
fed into political
agendas.
When
rating
formulas were being rejiggered in
Oklahoma, the governor at
the time, Mary
Fallin, was pushing for the
state to enact education
savings accounts, a form of
school vouchers, and likely
understood that toughening the
state’s school rating system would
make public schools look like worse
choices for parents.
In
Florida,
it’s not hard to imagine that Bush
had some motivation to
tweak the state’s school ratings
system to create more A-rated
schools as he prepared, both in his
ensuing consulting business with
Excel in Ed and his eventual run for
president, that it would be
advantageous to tout Florida’s
school reform effort, which he led,
as “a
model for the nation.”
Politics
Versus Performance
There’s
other evidence that state school rating
systems often reflect
personal and ideological preferences of
state leaders.
In
Indiana,
in 2012, the Washington
Post reported, State
Superintendent Tony Bennett
instructed
staffers to take advantage of a
loophole in the state’s system to
alter the rating of a charter
school, founded by a campaign donor,
by
eliminating the scores of some
student groups. The change raised
the
school’s original rating from a C to
an A. Bennett, who had moved
on to become the state school
superintendent in Florida,
subsequently
resigned.
States
with
a more
liberal orientation, one study
has shown, are more likely to
incorporate indicators related to
school quality and indicators of
student success, such as growth
measures, while states with a more
conservative leaning maintain a
focus on student test scores.
Another
study
examining the role of historical and
political context in
shaping assessment policy in
Nebraska and Virginia found
that the political culture in both
states strongly influenced their
assessment systems.
In
Nebraska, a historical culture rooted in
local action and
collaboration influenced the design process,
resulting in more local
support for its implementation and delaying
a shift to a state
standardized assessment system in favor of
local assessments.
In
contrast, Virginia, with a tradition of
centralization and top-down
accountability, implemented a top-down
policy model that emphasized
standardized testing and constrained
resources and opportunities for
policy transformation at lower policy
levels.
Questionable
Educational
Value
While
school rating systems may be a practical
means to a political end,
their educational value is questionable.
Despite
the proliferation of school rating systems,
there is very little
peer-reviewed, empirical research on their
effects on student
performance and school and teacher
practices.
Among
the studies that have been done, however,
there’s evidence that
collapsing multiple school performance
measures into a summative
rating or score is an especially poor
indicator of school quality and
does not sort out schools with high and
equitable achievement from
schools with high average achievement and
large achievement gaps.
For
example,
yet another study
of Oklahoma’s A-F rating system
examined whether the system had an
impact on the state’s policy agenda
to close the wide gap in test
scores between students enrolled in
the free and reduced lunch
program (a measurement of poverty)
and students with a minority
status compared to their better-off,
white peers. The study found
that “gaps moved in a direction
opposite from what would be desired
of an accountability system that
measured achievement equity.” The
report concluded, “A composite
letter grade provides very little
meaningful information about
achievement differences.”
Summative
ratings
also tend to obscure the well-documented
relationship between student
achievement scores and demographic
variables, most notably race and
socioeconomic status.
An
analysis
of the Maryland five-star rating
system, for instance, examined why
no high-poverty schools earned a
five-star rating, but when the
researchers adjusted ratings to
account for economic disadvantage,
the number of five-star schools
increased.
An
analysis
of California’s school dashboard
rating system found that, despite
all its nuance, “schools can earn
strong overall ratings even if
subgroup performance is
poor”—subgroup being a catchall
phrase
for specific populations of
students, such as low-income, Black,
and
Hispanic students or students who
have a learning disability or don’t
speak English well.
This
inability of summative school ratings to
distinguish school
performance from student demographic
variances disproportionally
harms schools serving marginalized children
and inflates the quality
of schools serving wealthy and white
students.
If
scores cannot sort out schools with high and
equitable achievement
from schools with high average achievement
and large achievement
gaps, they create inaccurate judgments about
school quality and
unfairly sanction some schools while not
holding other schools
accountable.
Where
Are the Democrats?
Because
state school rating systems that use
summative scores drawn from
student test scores are unlikely to take
into account the variability
in student learning experiences,
policymakers need to design an
accountability system that does a better job
of taking into account
differences in schools.
For
instance, an important aspect of school
performance that is missing
from state accountability systems are the
various inputs that are
critical to students’ learning experiences,
including access to
curriculum, diversity of textbooks, adequate
staffing, and the
availability of high-quality materials,
equipment, technology, and
facilities.
The
expansion
of rating systems to include
inputs, often referred to as
opportunity to learn standards,
could provide a more nuanced
appraisal of school performance.
However,
since
accountability is in part a political
process, it is not clear
that technical fixes can lead to systems
that are more reliable,
fairer, or more valid.
Which
begs
the question of where Democrats are on this
issue.
While
Republicans’
education messaging has been on a
slippery slope from
disparagement to destruction,
Democrats have generally remained
stuck
in a compromise—forged
with
Republicans during the enactment of No
Child Left Behind, and
renewed with ESSA—that support and
funding for public education
needs to be balanced with “accountability.”
Democrats’
calls
for schools to be accountable for “results,”
based
exclusively on student test scores and state
report card ratings,
have to a great extent contributed to the
Republican campaign to
continually disparage public schools. Even
in the bluest states,
public schools that are labeled failure,
with whatever the preferred
moniker happens to be, convey to parents
that the education system
isn’t working, and alternative education
providers, such as charter
and private schools, need to be accelerated.
But
it’s
not too late for Democrats to turn that
dynamic around. A good
start would be to call out Republicans for
manipulating state school
rating systems in order to advance their
political agendas. Democrats
could also propose adequate fixes to these
systems so they’re more
useful to their policy purposes. Or they
could propose getting rid of
them all together. But the status quo on
state school ratings has to
go.
This
commentary
was produced by Our
Schools.
BC
Guest Commentator Gail Sunderman,
PhD, is co-founder and former director
of the Maryland
Equity
Project at the University of
Maryland, a research and
policy center focused on access to
educational opportunities in
Maryland.
|