Editorials

Who made the grade?

Schools in Arkansas get As, Bs, Fs

It's about time. Past time, really. Parents in Arkansas--not to mention teachers, principals, taxpayers and even students--are now able to see how their schools are doing, and there's none of this Needs Improvement nonsense or that 1-5 scale. (Was 5 the best grade or the worst grade?)

Just as it's been for years and years for students, schools are now graded with As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. If the three keys to improving public education are accountability, transparency and choice, you may check the box for transparency now. In this state anyway, that's been taken care of.

It's been more than a decade in the making. Now that the new grades are in, some of us couldn't resist going online to see just how particular schools are doing.

And what a vast amount of information on the arkansased.gov website. We know of one particular young lady who attends a middle school in Central Arkansas, so we started there. A body can find out the average class size in the school, how much experience the average teacher has in that school, and how much the district spends per student in that school, as compared to the state average.

Oh, yes, and the grades, based on standardized test scores.

Somebody looking over the data can compare how, say, sixth-graders are doing this year in math, and compare that to how sixth-graders in that school did last year in the same subject. One fine day, this information will be available online so the public can track how much progress kids make from teacher to teacher each year. But school to school, grade to grade, school year to school year, will have to suffice for now.

If there is one thing we'd change about the online material, it would be to put the letter grade at the top of each page for each school, in large type, so parents don't have to go looking for it. If there's a good reason to fill up eight or nine pages with percentages and numbers and bury the letter grade on page 10 or 12, we haven't heard it yet. It appears as though transparency comes in small steps. Next year, a big letter grade on each school's Page One would be another step in the right direction.

These letter grades, mind you, don't carry with them any penalties or rewards. That's been taken care of through the state's School Recognition and Rewards Program, which the Legislature thought to improve--and fund--in last month's session. What these new letter grades will do, however, is make schools and educators answer for simple-to-understand grades, just as they've asked students to do since memory runneth not to the contrary.

Already, these new grades are being used to change how schools are run. At the state's largest school district in Little Rock, the superintendent, Dexter Suggs, has proposed organizing the district's 48 schools into four divisions, or as he calls them, Academic Zones, based on these letter grades.

Schools that have acceptable grades, like an A, B or gentleman's C, would be assigned to Academic Zones 1 or 2. Those schools that got bad grades this year would make up Zone 3. And those six schools that have already been classified as Academically Distressed in Little Rock would make up Zone 4.

Then, the school district could put the best lieutenant (or colonel, or, dare we say, sergeant) to lead those divisions.

Why, of course. The things that need to be done to improve a B school might be very different from the things that need to be done to improve an F school. Just as B students are different from those having the most problems.

The new system is a simple reform, but one that has been long overdue. Call it one more step forward, and every advance, great or small, deserves to be celebrated.

Editorial on 04/20/2015

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