The Cleveland Plain Dealer

8/17/2007

The irony of educators complaining about how they’re graded isn’t amusing. It’s infuriating.

The whining started almost from the moment the state and federal governments began a drive for academic accountability more than a decade ago. This week’s release of Ohio’s district and school building report cards has again roused the chorus: It’s not fair. It’s too hard. It limits creativity.

Stop the griping. Improvement starts with knowing where you are. Don’t focus on the score itself; look instead at what you need to learn to do better.

Not long ago, some districts barely blinked at graduating 18-year-olds who could neither read nor add. As recently as this spring, people questioned the fairness of withholding diplomas from students who had failed to pass a basic test of 10th-grade skills.

True, the standards are higher now. And today’s rating systems are exceedingly complex. But keep in mind some of the reasons for the many categories of measurement: Previous, simpler systems proved too easy to fool; districts with falling scores could quickly reverse the trend by suddenly labeling lower-achieving students as disabled, thus taking their poor results out of the calculations. Plus, focusing solely on overall averages led some school systems to concentrate all of their efforts on narrow segments of their enrollment - that is, the highest achievers or those closest to the benchmark set for passing scores.

In response to those loopholes, President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law requires schools to show effort on behalf of all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, income or previous achievement. That means more complicated ranking systems, but it also means that attention be paid to every student - a tradeoff that emphasizes the right priority.

Neither those who design accountability systems nor those who live within them can settle for the status quo. Ohio, for example, next will move beyond its pass-fail system to one that measures how much students advance from one year to the next.

Districts and schools disappointed with this year’s rankings need to examine where and how they fell short, then find ways to do better.

Accountability measures are efforts to ensure that all children actually receive the education society promises and pays for, to provide them with the opportunity to succeed as adults.

It is their best interests on which educators should concentrate - not the images of their districts.