The fine print

Read to the end

As something of a public service, we reprint today the last three paragraphs of Cynthia Howell’s article in Wednesday’s paper about the state’s education secretary, Jacob Oliva, speaking to a Rotary Club last week:

“In regard to holding schools accountable for student learning and applying A-to-F letter grades to the state’s public schools, Oliva said changes are forthcoming.

“Superintendents told him repeatedly that they had zero confidence in the current A-to-F grading system as a measure of learning taking place in schools.

“‘As someone who spent a year unpacking that, I would stand side by side with those superintendents and say the system needs to be overhauled,’ he said.”

You see? If you don’t read to the last paragraph, you can miss some important things. And when it comes to education articles in the paper, they are always crammed full of important things.

Secretary Oliva, and several others, spent most of the meeting last week talking about LEARNS and reporting reflected that. But then—either a question, or his own turn of thought—led the secretary to discuss the A-to-F grading system. And its coming overhaul, to use his description. Good.

This is near and dear to our inky hearts. The grading system for schools needs to be overhauled, updated, repaired and modernized. But it doesn’t need to be scrapped. What it needs is a good double-downing.

One grade given to the schools, for performance, is great. But it’s so 2009, to limit grading to just that. Schools should be graded—and parents, teachers, students and taxpayers alerted to— the improvement in school test scores as well.

The state already does this when it comes to handing out bonuses after the school year has ended. Schools get one set of bonuses for how well the students performed on standardized tests, but then a whole different set of bonuses is awarded to schools that make the most progress from year to year.

That way the best schools are recognized. And so are the schools making the most improvement, which often occurs in the most challenging ZIP codes.

It seems this can be easily tweaked to give two grades to schools, too. One for mastery of subjects. And one for how much progress has been made since last year.

The state is making real changes to education, starting with LEARNS. Real choice has been implemented. Teacher salaries are among the highest in the nation. So one more improvement shouldn’t cause too much extra work for the state.

Give two grades to schools and districts. The information is already there. The state’s parents, teachers and taxpayers would like to know. They can be safely trusted to understand the information, just as they do at bonus time.

Now that would be an overhaul that few could argue with.