School Report Cards? Not In Our Name.
Let Tony Bennett Grade Your $chool
Like many Philadelphia public school parents, I received an email from the district two weeks ago inviting me to weigh in on a new “school report card.” This report card was billed as a tool to give parents more information to help us make better choices about our schools. However, the school report card is the latest scheme in a series of efforts to grade public schools for questionable purposes. In Philadelphia, we’ve had AYP, School Annual Reports, and a school performance index (redone as recently as spring 2011). Interestingly enough, the Philadelphia School Partnership, a privately funded group, made up its own report card for schools last year, which was immediately decried for its shady reliance on minimal data.
The idea for a new graded school report card didn’t come from parents. The impetus for this new report card came from the Great Schools Compact Committee, which is a Gates-Foundation-funded organization. This group seeks to influence public education policy in Philadelphia and, with a booster grant from the Dell Foundation (which has funded controversial school reform efforts such as charter expansion across the country), it is currently funding consultants’ work on this new school report card.
It’s not surprising that every parent I spoke with after receiving that email responded with distrust and indignation. We’ve been around this block before. We’ve watched the district roll out assessment after assessment. Frankly, none of it ever represented what is noteworthy or admirable—or weak or lacking—in our children’s schools. Very few changes came as a result except for school closings and charter conversion. And none of it compares with the best ways parents have of assessing their children’s schools, which are primarily from walking in the door and meeting with the principal and teachers, observing a classroom or the lunchroom, and watching your child’s engagement with or alienation from school.