Jay P. Greene's Blog

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Baton Rouge Advocate reports that the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education discussed an analysis showing that the A-F grading system adopted in that state would find 46% of schools either D or F rated. The story makes clear that it could be higher next year. If the system had been used this year, the grade distribution would have looked like:

• A — 75 schools.
• B — 236 schools.
• C — 375 schools.
• D — 513 schools.
• F — 81 schools.

Louisiana had the lowest 4th grade reading scores in the nation of any state in 2009, and has been either near or at the bottom for a long time. A majority, 51% of Louisiana 4th graders scored “Below Basic” on 4th grade reading- making them functionally illiterate. Twice as many Ds as Bs sounds about right, maybe a little low.

The details of the Louisiana grading system differ from Florida. Schools will earn + and/or – along with their letter grades depending upon whether growth targets are met, and factors such as attendance influence the letter grades.  With that noted, the chart that Louisianans should tatoo on to their foreheads until the gales of controversy blow over is below:

In the first year of the Florida grading system, 677 schools graded out D or F while only 515 schools earned A or B grades. The year before, in 1998, Florida’s 4th Grade NAEP reading scores were 5th from the bottom, so this was truth in advertising. On four separate occasions, policymakers raised the standards to receive an A or B grade, but you can see the trend for yourself: now there are more than 10 times the number of A/B grades as D/F.

Sidebar: I often get asked on the road why the total number of schools goes up so much in this chart. The number of charter schools took off, Florida experienced a good deal of population growth, but probably the biggest factor is the shrinkage of the C category, which is offstage in this chart.

NAEP serves as a source of external validation for this progress, and the rigor of the FCAT exam has remained steady against NAEP.

Arizona, Indiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Utah have all adopted A-F school grades in the last two years, following the lead of Florida and New York City. Additional states have been/are still considering adopting the policy.

School grading is a tough love policy. It’s a lot easier to throw extra money at schools, call yourself the “education governor” and kick the can down the road. School grading  can work, and in fact has worked in Florida and New York City, but it could also easily fail if policymakers lose their nerve in the face of opposition. It requires an attitude similar to Churchill’s, who in his first Cabinet meeting as Prime Minister pronounced that he had nothing to offer but “blood, toil, sweat and tears.”

There is nothing magical about the Florida policies: they require moral courage, hard work, perseverance and patience to show results. Floridians rallied around their underperforming schools, ignored the howls of the reactionaries, rolled up their sleeves to get the job done.

Louisana spends $10,082 per year per child in the public school system, but fails to teach half their students how to read. Lock and load, Louisiana- it’s time to rise to the challenge.