No matter how many times people who actually know stuff about education patiently explain to corporate education policy boosters that poverty is the big factor in student outcomes, they wave it off as irrelevant. Surely, they insist, if we just spend more money and time on tests and less on books and school supplies and teacher pay, if we fire more teachers and make the ones that survive spend all their time teaching to the test, educational outcomes will miraculously improve even if some kids are hungry all day and just got evicted and maybe are even homeless while others have plenty to eat and sleep in the same comfy bed every night. So let's just grade their schools and teachers like it's within a teacher's power to overcome all that inequality!
Yeah, about that. The Miami Herald has dug into the data on school grades:
- Of the 209 schools in Miami-Dade and Broward with at least 90 percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch, 78 percent received a grade of C or worse. Roughly 39 percent of these high-poverty schools received a D or F.
- Of the 43 local schools with much lower poverty rates (30 percent or fewer students receiving free or reduced lunch), 86 percent received an A, and none received a D or F.
So teachers in low-income schools are basically punished for being teachers in low-income schools, trying to educate the kids who need help the most. Meanwhile, Florida's
now-resigned education chief created a loophole in the grading system for a donor's charter school during his time working in Indiana, which definitely has to raise confidence in the Florida school grading system.
These grading systems are inherently unfair, but they shouldn't also be outright corrupt. Tell the Indiana attorney general to investigate former Indiana schools Superintendent Tony Bennett for changing the grade of a charter school for a donor.