Perspective: Incomplete grades

A Times Editorial

Incomplete grades

The marked improvement in school grades is heartening, but we should keep in mind what the governor's grading plan can and cannot do.

Schools across Florida have responded to the challenge Gov. Jeb Bush presented them. Improve your scores on standardized tests, he said, or risk losing your students to private schools and your teachers to unemployment.

Students' test scores have gotten so much better, in fact, that only four of Florida's 2,388 public schools were assigned a grade of F for their performance in the school year that just ended. The number of A's jumped from 203 to 551. Said Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher on Wednesday: "The student performances reflected in these grades go beyond our highest expectations."

Indeed, the test scores are worth celebrating. And now that round two of Bush's statewide grading system is complete, maybe both the governor and the educators he provoked with his A+ Plan can sit down at the chalkboard and calmly assess where the state is headed.

Leaving aside the wisdom of vouchers and whether they play a constructive role in any public education system, Bush can rightfully claim to have gotten the attention of teachers, principals and superintendents across the state. He has stirred up a system that is sometimes resistant to change. That's good.

The problem is that his method -- using the results from one set of standardized tests, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, to assess the fitness of every school in Florida -- is so narrow that it distorts everything else that schools try to achieve.

Already, some elementary schools are limiting their geography, social studies and science lessons because the FCAT doesn't test them. The arts and physical education, also not tested by FCAT, could be next. And what conscientious high school principal would want his teachers and students devoting time to sports or cheerleading or the chess club if the governor's high-stakes grading plan doesn't measure them?

The FCAT is a well-constructed standardized test, but let's not pretend that any standardized test can replace the daily classroom give-and-take between teachers and students. Though universities also place great emphasis on a standardized test, the SAT, they use it as only one criterion for admissions. They know that the strongest predictor of success in college is not the SAT but high school grades.

Let's also not pretend that the FCAT results tell us much about the quality of teaching. Because the tests are not currently used to measure student improvement over the course of a year, they tend largely to show which schools have the brightest and best prepared (or most disadvantaged) students in the first place. Of the nine high schools in Florida that were awarded A's, for example, eight of them have specialized academic programs that accept only the smartest students.

What the governor says he wants, and what Florida needs, is a way to hold schools accountable. But the A+ Plan alone can't accomplish that.

We should all be pleased with the improvement in FCAT test scores in the past academic year, but we have to keep them in their proper perspective. So should the governor's school grading system.