Calif. education: No single grades for schools, state board urges - ContraCostaTimes.com

Calif. education: No single grades for schools, state board urges - ContraCostaTimes.com:

Calif. education: No single grades for schools, state board urges

For more than a decade, the federal Department of Education has behaved like a national dean of students, punishing schools where all groups of students fail to achieve.

On Wednesday, California's State Board of Education signaled, as expected, its intention to reclaim more authority, to deploy more yardsticks of school success and to press the federal government to toe its line.

The state wants to deter Uncle Sam from assigning schools a single grade -- in the same way that the state board intends to dump its annual report card, known as the Academic Performance Index, the single score on a 200-to-999 scale representing the worth of each of the state's approximately 10,000 public schools.

That index, anxiously awaited every spring by parents and Realtors, has been despised by educators, who see it as a narrow and unfair summary of each school. State education officials suspended it after 2013.

In a letter dated Wednesday, the state suggests that federal officials should adopt "multiple measures" for judging school performance and that the lowest-performing school label should not be based largely on test scores. The letter, signed by state board President Mike Kirst and state schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson, also suggests that student performance should be based on "competency" rather than measured by grade level.

Civil rights and children's advocates see the API, for all its flaws, as a means of transparency and accountability.

Whatever replaces the API, "We need to make sure that for all kids and all parents there's a general understanding of how schools are doing," said Samantha Tran of the Oakland-based advocacy group Children Now. Too many metrics will muddy the picture, she said.

The state is submitting its letter as the federal Department of Education drafts rules for Calif. education: No single grades for schools, state board urges - ContraCostaTimes.com: