For most of us, letter grades generally don’t reflect how smart we are or how much we learned about, say, medieval history. They can reflect our feelings at one point in time about the importance of, say, medieval history to our current experience. The same sentiment (that grades fail to tell the whole story of us) applies to the letter grades the Arkansas Department of Education has given to schools: they don’t tell the whole story.
Last week, the Bureau of Legislative Research presented a report before the members of the House and Senate Committees on Education on the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment and Accountability Program. The School Rating System (or, the A-F grading system) falls within that program.
Those who assign the letter grades want this to be a tool that parents and citizens can use to measure how well (or poorly) their schools close achievement gaps. The Arkansas Department of Education issues grades based on weighted points in four areas: Weighted Performance Score, Improvement Score with ESEA Options, Four Year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate, and Adjustments in Achievement and Graduation Gaps.
Basically, ADE looks at how well students are performing on assessments, graduation rates over time, and how far gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers have closed.
During the 2013-2014 school year:
- 162 schools were given an A
- 322 schools were given a B
- 365 schools were given a C
- 158 schools were given a D
- 43 schools were given a F
There’s been quite a bit of discussion over the past year about whether this form of measurement is effective or useful. Most experts recognize that environmental factors (like poverty, parental involvement, availability of afterschool and summer program, etc.) aren’t easily incorporated into the A-F grading system – although there is an effort to account for those challenges in how the letter grades are calculated.
When we dig into the data, we see that these grades tell us something deeper. They tell us that there are still racial and poverty biases reflected in the grades.
In our analysis, we used the department’s designation of “economically disadvantaged” to find out what grades were assigned to 100 schools with the highest amount of poverty and 100 schools with the lowest amount of poverty.
Poverty and School Letter Grades
| Grade | Lowest Poverty Schools | Highest Poverty
Schools |
| A | 42 | 7 |
| B | 37 | 17 |
| C | 20 | 26 |
| D | 1 | 38 |
| F | 0 | 12 |
The schools with the fewest number of children in poverty scored “C’s” and higher. A larger percentage of this group also scored A’s and B’s than schools with higher numbers of poorer children. Among the schools with the highest number of low income children, we found that a larger number of those schools received of “D’s” and “F’s.” It’s not a coincidence that schools with more affluent children perform better on standardized tests, have higher graduation rates, and have smaller achievement gaps.
We also looked at how race plays into school grade measures. In schools where children of color make up more than half of the student population, a majority of those schools made “C’s” and lower grades and a smaller number of them made “A’s and B’s.”
The Impact of Race on School Letter Grades
| Grade | Percentage of High Minority Schools that Received Each Letter Grade |
| A | 12% |
| B | 13% |
| C | 24% |
| D | 55% |
| F | 90% |
Nearly all of the F’s and over half of the D’s went to high-minority schools. The state’s grading system indicates a cultural bias. Less than one-fourth of the As and Bs went to high minority schools. By using this system to assess school performance, we fail to account for key factors (like race and poverty) that correlate with achievement gaps.
Beyond the inability to effectively consider outside factors, school grading systems lead to unintentional shaming of low performing schools. School report card systems damage a school’s morale and cause parents, teachers, and students to feel branded in a negative way. The system also doesn’t consider or offer insight on what resources the schools need in order to improve. Some have described this as using a “thermometer” approach instead of a “thermostat.” When we use a thermometer, the state shows problems that are related to race and poverty; when we us a thermostat, we focus on what we can change to improve educational environments.
Our school grading system is flawed as a method for school accountability. Instead of a grading system that awards some and shames others, we need a system that recognizes what supports schools need in order to change outcomes.