On School Accountability Policies, It’s In with the New, Tension with the Old
The school choice revolution continues. Six states now allow each child’s education funding to be used for the school or educational expenses of his choice. More states are soon to follow. What seemed impossible only five years ago became permissible — necessary, even — in red states thanks to a perfect constellation of circumstances. Most notably, union intransigence over school re-openings and Zoom schooling revealed to families how disconnected schools were from their own values, igniting urgency in dismantling the teacher union monopoly over K-12 education.
Because victories were achieved with limited opportunity for broader strategic planning, states that have adopted universal education savings accounts (ESAs) have not overhauled their education systems in ways that fully embrace the cardinal wisdom of ESAs — that accountability ought to derive from parents rather than bureaucrats. Indeed, work remains to be done to bring policy into alignment with first principles.
Perhaps nowhere is the tension between the old accountability regime and the new more apparent than on the issue of state report cards. The Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), the successor to No Child Left Behind, requires every state to publish data on school performance metrics like educational achievement, student progress, and graduation rates. States have some latitude in determining which metrics are used and how they are weighted, and substantial discretion in determining how data are presented to parents. For example, California has a dashboard system that presents outcomes for each metric, whereas nine states distill the various metrics into a single A-F letter grade.
Letter grades represent a blunt classification that essentially labels schools as good, bad, or something in between. Teacher unions and Democratic allies have long lamented that the grade is an oversimplified assessment of school quality. Oklahoma State Rep. John Waldron, for example, recently opined that the system “tends to label schools that are struggling with very difficult conditions, like long-term poverty, and lots of children at risk.” Last month, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer abolished the state A-F school grading system altogether, peeling off some Republican support in the House along the way.
Bipartisan agreement in education policy is increasingly rare, but perhaps acknowledgment of the deficiencies of letter grades represents opportunity for a common cause. Indeed, Waldron is correct that the grades provide more information about the type of student that a school serves than they do about the quality of the school. Whereas student proficiency typically accounts for a plurality of the grade, research indicates that at least 70% of student achievement is determined by non-school factors, particularly socioeconomic status.
More importantly, deference to the primacy of parental judgment that ostensibly fuels support for ESAs cannot possibly be reconciled with a system that tasks state bureaucrats with determining whether schools are good or bad. The unions were correct that the issue of school quality is more complex than deriving a grade from imperfect metrics.
Texas poignantly illustrates the tension being baked into state education policy. Governor Greg Abbott has made ESAs front and center of his legislative agenda while emphasizing that parents know best when it comes to their children’s education. Meanwhile, the state website that allows parents to search for school grades invites them to “discover how your school and district are preparing your child for the future.”
A review of the most recent school grades issued in Texas reveals that parents and bureaucrats do in fact sometimes disagree about school quality. Twenty-eight classical charter schools received lower scores than the district they operate in, while only 17 received higher scores. However, demand for classical education, which places greater emphasis on ethics, classical literature, and the study of Western civilization, is surging, while enrollment in Texas district schools is declining. Parents who enroll their children in classical schools are no less likely to care about their child’s future. They simply have a different vision of what that future should look like and the type of school that prepares them for it.
Consumers need information for markets to operate optimally, and the burgeoning school choice marketplace is no exception. States that embrace educational freedom should ensure that school reporting systems provide clear diagnostic data about school outcomes without spoon-feeding simplistic determinations about school quality.
