Kentucky: New School Rating System is Likely to Identify Schools with High-Poverty Enrollments

Kentucky launched its new school rating system, based on federal law requiring states to rate schools and identify the “lowest” 5 percent. 

Instead of letter grades (the Jeb Bush model), Kentucky will award stars.

Is this a distinction without a difference?

Most of the rating will be based on test scores and growth in test scores and graduation rates and other measures.

The experience of other states is that the ratings invariably show that the schools with the highest proportions of poor students get the lowest ratings.

No one should be surprised, since standardized tests are normed on a bell curve and highly correlated with family income.

Schools with affluent kids get high ratings, and schools with poor kids get low ratings.

Will Kentucky be any different?

Doubtful.

This mandate to rate schools based on test scores is baked into the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Its purpose is supposedly informational, but in fact it is used to identify schools to close. Their students are directed elsewhere, or their school becomes a charter, and vast resources are wasted on structural changes that should have been spent reducing class sizes, promoting arts education, paying teachers more, and supporting strategies that help students do better in school and encourage teacher retention.

But we live in a time of stupid mandates. This law should be rewritten before we write off another generation of students.