Michigan House votes to scrap A-F school grade system
Lansing — The Michigan House voted Tuesday to ditch an A–F letter grade system for overall academic performance of K-12 public schools.
The bill, approved on a 63-45 vote in the Democratic-controlled House, would eliminate both the statewide system that assigns letter grades and rankings to public schools and the requirement that the Michigan Department of Education compiles a list of the state's lowest-performing schools determined through the grades and rankings.
The grading system — long opposed by state education officials — was approved in December 2018 by a Republican-lead Legislature in the early morning hours of a lame-duck session.
Rep. Matt Koleszar, the Plymouth Democrat and former teacher who sponsored the bill, compared the grading system to a confusing, incomplete piece of homework he'd expected from a student rushing to make deadline.
The grading policy, he said, is a "duplicative, confusing system that received bipartisan opposition" and passed the formerly Republican-led majority by the slimmest of margins.
"It does nothing to actually improve a school’s performance," Koleszar said. "It is way too focused on standardized testing data which has no bearing on what our schools are dealing with.”
Rep. Jaime Greene, R-Richmond, urged lawmakers to hold off on repeal and instead find a system that works for parents and children.
"It is time to stop ramming through legislation," Greene said on the House floor.
Koleszar's legislation, House Bill 4166, was introduced March 2 and voted out of the House Education Committee Tuesday morning after a brief hearing.
Under the existing law, MDE is required by Sept. 1 to release A-to-F grades for public schools based on their performance on certain indicators and rankings on metrics. The published grades and rankings are in addition to MDE’s school index score, which also measures school performance.
The bill also would end a rule that MDE implement accountability measures for schools in the bottom 5% based on the grades and that districts and charter school authorizers not reopen a school at the same location as a low-performing school.
Passage of the A-F system gave Michigan two separate accountability systems for its K-12 schools. It was already using a system under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act when state lawmakers imposed the new grading system.
Michigan has a school index system with an overall index ranging from 0-100 for each school based on student growth, proficiency, graduation rates, attendance rates, advanced coursework completion, postsecondary enrollment, staffing ratios and the educational progress of students from families where English is not the primary language spoken at home.
MDE officials have said the A-F system does not conform with federal law requirements and that Michigan schools are subject to two stand-alone accountability systems, with similar, but slightly different criteria for identification of low-performing schools.
The state board of education supports getting rid of the system, calling it unnecessary and duplicative of information found the department's Parent Dashboard for School Transparency.
The Michigan Department of Education has said the grading system "distills the performance of schools into overly simple letter grades" and "relies too heavily on assessment data to the exclusion of other important measures of student progress."
The state's School Index already requires by federal law that states identify low performing schools and provide supports to those identified schools, MDE spokesman Martin Ackley said.
"MDE will continue to identify and support low-performing schools through the School Index system as it has done since 2017," Ackley said Monday.
Many educators support the system's demise, while others call it a move away from transparency for the state's K-12 education system.
"The multiple letter grade system in Michigan is incoherent and irrelevant to school districts and schools. It is a product of an historic disconnect between governors, the Legislature, MDE, and school districts," Superintendent Nikolai Vitti with Detroit Public Community Schools, said in an email.
"K-12 public education needs a coherent, fair, and reliable Michigan accountability system...However, they do have a responsibility to replace it with something more coherent, relevant, fair, and reliable to ensure that student achievement improves in the state," Vitti said.
Beth DeShone, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, said the bills amounts to anti-transparency legislation brought forward by House Democrats to intentionally hide school performance reports from Michigan parents.
The school report cards are designed to help parents and taxpayers hold elected officials, local school boards, and the state’s public school bureaucracy accountable for what they do — and do not — deliver for children, DeShone said.
"Let's be very clear about this — House Bill 4166 is anti-transparency legislation. It's a push to sweep learning loss under the rug, and kids along with it," DeShone said in a statement. "Beyond school report cards, this legislation would kill numerous additional transparency requirements designed to inform parents and policymakers alike. It's a bill that will exacerbate inequalities, widen the learning gap, and disproportionately punish students in schools that struggle the most."
Leadership from the state's charter school association is taking a neutral stand on the bill.
"We support a single statewide academic accountability system, one that is aligned and considers federal, state, authorizer, school level accountability, stated in Michigan statute, that would incorporate consistent, minimum rules for charter public school performance," Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said in an email.
The first year the system was to be rolled out, MDE did not meet the Sept. 1 legislative deadline to issue letter grades to public schools because the data needed for the 2018-19 school year was not available until after Sept. 1 that year.
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