Superintendent wants to grade Georgia high schools on overall performance
Georgia soon could join other states that grade schools on their overall performance.
An idea floated last week by state Superintendent Brad Bryant at a Georgia Board of Education meeting opened the door for discussion on the strategy, which would be piloted in high schools first.
Bryant said a performance index could be used to give schools a numerical grade that looks beyond traditional accountability measures of success to SAT scores and other factors such as whether students completed two or more years of a foreign language, took Advanced Placement courses and how they fared on AP exams.
“Many parents and students want to know how well their high school is doing,” Bryant said. “This is an opportunity for us to give them some information that might help.”
The only current state-generated barometers of success for high schools in Georgia are graduation rates and marks on whether a campus has met Adequate Yearly Progress performance goals for students.
Several states, including Louisiana and Florida, also assign grades to high schools and lower schools.
Discussion of how the grading system would be developed and what areas it would measure will continue over the next several months. State officials who work in college readiness and have expertise as high school principals are helping to lead the effort and will be looking to educators and others across Georgia for input.
Preliminary suggestions would have the index rate a school's success in post-secondary enrollment; how it prepares students for college and careers; and the adequacy of course rigor to help students pass the Georgia High School Graduation test and final exams, among other factors.
The plan follows a failed bill in the Georgia Legislature that called for grading schools to help educate the public about their performance.
“I think it’s a great idea,” state school board member Linda Zechmann said. “It will be more comprehensive.”
Bryant said it also will help parents and local schools put Adequate Yearly Progress designations into perspective.
“Some of our local high schools have to feel schizophrenic," Bryant said. "They are not making AYP because of a particular subgroup, they are on the Needs Improvement List, yet they are recognized as one of the top 500 schools in the nation. We are going to give them a diagnostic map so that more if not all of their kids can become college- and career-ready.”
Randolph Bynum, Atlanta Public Schools associate superintendent for high schools, said establishing an equitable state grading system for schools will be challenging.
“There are too many variables that play into this to appropriately and fairly grade a school,” Bynum said. “When you are talking about AP courses, just because one school has 10 and another school has 15, that doesn’t mean that that graduate is a better student or that school is a better school. That may be based on the resources they have.’’
Bynum said the grading effort should focus on workforce and college readiness by looking at whether a student needed remedial help to keep up once they entered higher education or had a smooth transition. “That is the gauge of a quality school,” he said.
Parent Joe Armstrong of Buford, a warehouse manager who has a fourth-grader and 10th-grader in the Gwinnett system, supports the idea of grading schools. “I think it’s a good thing,” he said. “It promotes competition. It pushes a school to perform better and promotes excellence in teaching.’’
