A-to-F grading systems for public schools get new scrutiny
News this week that Tony Bennett, the former Indiana education commissioner, quietly altered the state grade for a charter school founded by a campaign donor has raised questions about validity of the trendy A-to-F grading system used in more than a dozen states.
Bennett resigned his job as Florida education commissioner on Thursday amid revelations that he directed staff to alter grades of the charter school last fall, when he was Indiana’s schools chief.
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E-mails obtained and published this week by the Associated Press show that Bennett was alarmed in September 2012 when Christel House Academy, a charter school founded by prominent GOP donor Christel DeHaan, was about to be labeled a “C” school by the state’s annual grading system. DeHaan has given more than $2.8 million to Republicans since 1998, including $130,000 to Bennett, who was elected Indiana education commissioner in 2008.
Christel House had been kindergarten through eighth grade until grades nine and 10 were added in 2012. The new students struggled — just one-third of 10th-graders passed Algebra 1, enough to pull down the school’s overall rating from A to C. At Bennett’s direction, his staff took advantage of a regulatory loophole to toss out the
