L.A. Unified may issue ratings to its schools and charters to help parents choose - Los Angeles Times
L.A. Unified may issue ratings to its schools and charters to help parents choose
Los Angeles Unified is considering its first-ever plan to provide a rating scale for public schools and privately run charters, a move aimed at giving parents and educators simple and accessible analysis of campus performance, documents reviewed by The Times show.
If it moves forward, the effort to rate schools on a scale of 1 to 5 would allow for a direct comparison of academic programs in a way that would benefit some schools and present others in an unflattering light. The proposal is already raising red flags among critics who say such simplified ratings would be unfair to some schools.
“Schools are not restaurants and should NOT be rated!” said Juan Flecha, president of the school administrators union, in an email. “I think this is demoralizing and a slap to all of the dedicated employees of schools receiving one, two, and three stars.”
The system, which could roll out as soon as October, appears to have lukewarm support from Supt. Austin Beutner and mixed support from Board of Education members.
“We have to, as a district, get comfortable talking about results,” said board member Nick Melvoin, who supports the proposed system.
The goal is to allow all schools to be compared “side by side with consistent data,” according to documents. Most of a school’s score would be based on students’ performance on state standardized tests. More credit would be given for a school’s test improvement rate rather than the scores.
At elementary and middle schools, 45% of a rating would be based on test improvement and 35% on the score. The final 20% would be based on how well the school is keeping suspension rates low and preventing chronic absenteeism.
At the high school level, 40% of the rating would be based on a school’s test improvement and 25% on scores. Again, 20% would be based on suspension numbers and absenteeism. Another 15% would take in factors including the graduation rate, the percentage of students who qualify for admission to a four-year state college and student performance on the standardized exams related to Advanced Placement courses.
The formula takes into account how well smaller groups, such as Latinos or African American students, are faring. If such a group is doing especially poorly, it would count against the school’s overall number.
The new School Performance Framework is an outgrowth of a resolution passed by the school board on April 10, 2018, several weeks before Beutner was hired. It was brought forward by Melvoin and Kelly Gonez.
Melvoin said he expects the system to be in effect by October, when parents will be using a relatively new online application for magnet schools and other programs.
“We need a vocabulary to talk about schools that are high-
and low-performing,” as well as which schools are having more success with similar students, Melvoin said. “There is this myth that we already know this information. If we know this and are not doing something about it, then that’s a problem. I actually don’t think we know this.”
On that part, Beutner is in agreement.
