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Among the other educational reforms that our governor wants to institute is issuing report cards for schools. They would get grades from A to F, just as students do for various subjects, and these report cards would be available to the public.
The idea isn't original with Gov. Bill Owens, even in Colorado. Several years ago, the Independence Institute in Golden was somehow distracted from its usual duties of promoting highway construction and suburban sprawl, and issued report cards for Colorado schools.
Those cards listed scores on standardized tests and then assigned grades. That's pretty much what the governor wants the state to do, but school administrators spoke against his proposal at a hearing before the House Education Committee last week.
One said it would stigmatize
children who went to
bad schools, and another went into detail about how a kid
who went to a D school would think of himself as a D person
all his life.
My first reaction is that school administrators must come from that pool of unfortunates who had trouble learning the alphabet, since they have problems with every letter after A.
Consider the Colorado High School Activities
Association, which governs high-school sports and is run by
school administrators. When I was a schoolboy, the
classifications ran from D (tiny schools that played 6-man
football) to C (8-man) to B (11-man, and the Limon Badgers
always won the state championship) on up to AAA. I never
knew anyone from Evans, Berthoud, Lyons or Erie who
expressed shame or humiliation on account of having
attended a Class B
school.
But there's doubtless a pecking order for educrats, and in that league, nobody wants to be from a Class C school. So now, to preserve their precious self-esteem, the categories run from A to AAAAA.
And that's probably how they would grade schools if they
were forced to issue their own report cards. It's like
asking a Realtor about education -- no matter where the
house sits, if you're remotely interested in buying it,
then it's in a district known for its excellent
schools.
Coloradans who are smart enough to care about their children's education are smart enough not to trust Realtors about such matters. But where does one turn for accurate and unbiased information about the state of the local educational system?
This information is increasingly important because of
the changing nature of American internal migration. I just
started reading a new book, Hot Towns.
Author Peter
Wolf says we're in America's fifth migration.
This
one isn't from farm to city, or city to suburb, but from
anywhere to attractive places.
And one of the attractions is the educational system. Any of us can spend an hour or two in a town, and know the general state of its parks, streets, downtown and library.
But it would take a lot longer than that to find out whether the public schools were any good. Excellent physical facilities are obvious, but they don't tell you whether kids get stigmatized or ostracized if they don't go out for football or don't attend the morning prayer meeting at the flagpole.
Nor will appearances tell you whether the district puts a higher priority on learning the multiplication table or on enhancing holistic refusal skills. There are dozens of things that parents care about that a brief examination will not disclose, and in an economy where increasing numbers of people can choose where they will live, there will be a demand for that information.
This part of the Owens plan is a start on a good idea -- tell people how Colorado public schools compare to each other, at least on what can be measured with tests, so that people can make better decisions.
And if the school administrators think that getting a D is stigmatizing, why do they continue to issue such grades to students?
They'll tell you it's because those students deserve it because they failed to do the work. So why don't the administrators deserve a D or an F if they're failing to do their jobs?
Besides, they probably take grades too seriously anyway. I got a D in 10th-grade typing -- not because I was a bad typist (I was the fastest boy in the class), but because my shirt was not tucked in and I had bad posture. By modern theory, that should have traumatized me, but I still manage to operate a keyboard even though I still slouch while my shirt is untucked.
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