Improving Schools: A Job for Parents, Not Bureaucrats
Our children's education is too important to be left solely to the government.
With the arrival of a new Democratic administration, the country will no doubt experience another bout of self-reflection and debate on race-based preferences. Despite the fact we have elected an African-American president — a clear demonstration if ever there was one of the diminishing level of racism in America — the civil rights lobby sees no reason to diminish their fierce defense of a racial spoils system which has come to dominate education, contracting, and employment at all levels of government.
But there may be another avenue which the country can pursue, at least when it comes to public schools — one far less divisive and more effective in removing racial barriers. There is no magic to it really: all it takes is encouraging parents to seize control of their own local schools from petty bureaucrats and take issue with seemingly race-neutral policies which have an adverse impact on minority students.
A recent tussle in Fairfax County, an affluent suburb of Washington D.C., provides an excellent example of just how it can be done. Fairfax County schools, among some of the best in the nation, have employed a grading system at odds with virtually all other districts in the country. Most schools grade in ten-point increments with, for example, 90-100% resulting in an “A” and 60% being the lowest passing grade. But in Fairfax County a six-point grading scale is used which breaks down as follows:
A 94-100 C 74-79
B+ 90-93 D+ 70-73
B 84-89 D 64-69
C+ 80-83 F Below 64
Parents have long complained that the grading system puts their children at a disadvantage in college admissions, honors programs placement, and automatic merit scholarships when competing with students graded on a traditional system. Indeed, the county’s own 120-page study released this month confirmed that in various ways. For example, it confirmed that a majority of colleges surveyed do not re-calculate grades to account for its more stringent grading system. It also confirmed that Fairfax County students have lower GPAs compared to students elsewhere with the same SAT scores (suggesting that they would have received the benefit of higher grades in other school districts). Moreover, evidence from robust research demonstrates that the students most adversely affected by the extra rigorous system were minority students.
But the Fairfax County School Board officials for years have refused to budge. The superintendent seemingly ignored the findings of his own report and recommended no change in the grading scale. A majority of the Fairfax County School Board also would have none of it and remained committed to the existing system.
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Jennifer Rubin is PJM's Washington, DC, editor. She also blogs at Commentary’s Contentions.
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16 Comments
1. vivo:School improvement can only come from educated and interested parents, and teachers.
Jan 15, 2009 - 4:15 am 2. Spider79:Agreed Vivo. The way parents in Fairfax banded together to affect change is SOP in mine and neighboring communities, but if the involvement stops there the kids will still fail or underachieve. The article describes a good first step.
Jan 15, 2009 - 6:28 am 3. Prague:Agreed that parents need to be involved, but this seems silly. Just because other schools have lowered standards doesn’t mean kids aren’t going to need the best education they can get. Twisting the system like this only improves the peception; it doesn’t actually solve any problems.
My high school in PA had essentially the same grading scale (and we were definitely not “rich kids,” trust me). Parents had many of the same arguments. The solution? All transcripts were published with the percentile score only, with a grading scale provided as a key immediately next to the overall GPA. Worked fine for us.
Jan 15, 2009 - 7:01 am 4. polkabout:I agree that the schools would improve with more constructive involvement of parents with their children & schools. This is not an issue that should waste the too seldom effort & energy by parents. The six point system used is better than the ten point. Someone with a 98 should not be lumped together with someone with a 91. That margin of difference should be granted. It should be made completely fair & honest for all by simply recording the actual numerical grade itself.
Jan 15, 2009 - 7:25 am 5. bill:I went to school in Prince William County just south of Fairfax. I can tell you that a more arrogant, self-righteous bunch of dirtbags has never run a school system in America. That being said, it’s worth noting that I lived in the same neighborhood with my black schoolmates. We had the same houses, our fathers worked at the same type of jobs (mostly government), and I had as many black friends as white. Still, the white kids consistently outperformed the black kids. Why? A good example is my junior-year English class. The racial mix was pretty equal and the teacher was a big black guy who, though he was fair and amiable to all students, obviously favored the black ones. Our end of the year assignment was an oral report. If the black students even did theirs, they were pretty weak. All except one girl who did a sterling job (better than mine). While she was reading, the white kids listened respectfully while the black kids rolled their eyes, shook their heads, and generally disparaged one of their own simply for doing a good job. For the most part, black underachievement is a problem within the black community. No amount of tweaking this or that is going to make a difference until they remove the stigma of success.
Jan 15, 2009 - 7:27 am 6. Parent:Anyone wanting an example of what happens when schools exclude parents can come to LA: we took away the ability of local schools to fund themselves, concluding the state had to dole out funds equally. Rich parents fled. We bussed. More parents fled. The teachers unionized. The Administrators retreated to a centrally run location which issues edicts from air conditioned offices like King George. Anyone that can flees.
Our school system is now run for the benefit of the administrators and unionized teachers. Kids lucky enough to bump into some of the good teachers or live on the Westside are just that: lucky. Those teachers ought to be paid twice the going rate, but they get the same as the dullards, the ones that bore the kids, show movies and leave the kids wondering why they go to school in the first place. The good teachers leave when they can for a private school. Many substitute teachers are the classic example of the overweight, indifferent, form-filling, moronic public employee.
The system is so bad that a private company called Green Dot offered to take control of a school, and over half the unionized teachers agreed to go with it! Parents lined up to join. The School District reacted by terminating the principal that allowed the vote to happen (his disintegrating school was OK–doing something about it was not).
Meanwhile the rich and middle class parents are off “meddling” in their private schools with bake sales, donations, time and the teachers are able to teach. Fighting is unheard of.
The “professional educators” (meaning people that are good paper pushers and pension takers, not good teachers) decide how to educate your kids. They adopt every measure of “diversity” textbook that excludes famous Americans in favor of obscure names dredged up from a diary so that diversity is honored even if trust, importance and subject mmatter facination are jettisoned.
US public schools did just fine before unions, escalating taxes, and all the other BS layered onto them in the last 30 years. It was a gross error to tamper with that successful system.
Jan 15, 2009 - 9:00 am 7. deguello:PARENT: It is not the the teacher’s unions(corrupt as they may be) that ultimately control our schools. The educational system is working fine, thank you very much.However, most people don’t realize that it is supposed, to inculcate feckless ignorance, not seriousness and knowledge,and to drive as many people out the skilled workforce through failure,so that the jobs can either be done by poorly paid immigrants, or shipped out overseas.The interests of the reigning plutocracy would be threatened if our schools graduated competent,informed, politically knowledgeable students, who seeing that their future was being outsourced,would demand political change.The drop out rate in our urban schools hovers at about 50%;that figure contains the majority of our criminals,but a criminal is far easier for the plutocracy to handle, than an active politically informed,or even revolutionary citizen.The public school system of the USA is a tool of repression,and a moral outrage,run by the witting and unwitting servants of the globalist plutocracy.
Jan 15, 2009 - 10:43 am 8. Oziripus:Abe Lincoln asked the farmer, “see that horse? How many legs has it got?”
“Why, four legs!”
“Now, if you call the tail a leg, how many legs has it got?”
“Five, of course!”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
—
When I was in high school and college, in the 1940s, F was 69 and below, A was 94 and above. And the questions/writing demanded were substantial. Good for Fairfax. Bad for Rubin.
Jan 15, 2009 - 11:09 am 9. Parent(Plutocrat):Deguello:
I’m tempted to quote Mr. Hand (”Are you on drugs?”), but let me put down my martini and big stoogie, dismiss the servants and respond a bit:
(1) in most major cities it IS the plutocrats that are howling for the unions to let go their death grip on the schools so incompetent teachers can be fired, academic standards reimposed, mindless diversity days dumped, and bungling principals fired. In NY think Trump; in LA think Dick Riorden.
Opposing the plutocrats are the unions and the poverty and diversity pimps: when LAUSD tried to fire a total boob that had run LAUSD for years, they were instantly accused of being racists. Same thing just happened when they wanted to can Mr. Brewer, a nice enough but ineffectual ex admiral hired to run the place, and who simply helped run it further into the ground.
When Plutocrats like me insisted that schools should teach english not spanish in LA, even 70% of the spanish speaking parents approved. They’re not dumb. It was the teacher’s unions, the translators and “educators” who erupted in charges of “cultural racism,” and wanted to prolong spanish instruction into the 12th grade.
Who complains when workers cannot read and write? Employers–non government ones that is. I need people here not in India.
(2) The powers that be know that the US economic system is more likely to dumped by ignorant voters than informed ones: we want people to know about the history of the US, of socialist screw ups, and of socialism’s anti-liberty, anti-freedom bent. Think USSR, Cuba, you name it. Do you think I would have hired Ward Churchill in Colorado? Or any one of the Duke 88?
Get a grip. Read a paper. Maybe a book.
Jan 15, 2009 - 12:12 pm 10. garrett:Most private schools, especially Catholic high schools use the ten point scale. Most private school students do better on SATs then their peers. What’s the difference? School focus on academics and parents that are engaged in their student’s work and study habits parents that model an importance of self reliance anda focus on excellance tend to have kids that do well in rigorous schools. Many students in Catholic high schools have parents that make real sacrifices and scrounge for the money to send their kids to the school. It sounds to me like a bunch of rich parents in fairfax want better grades for their students with out either the parents or the students beign required to make any real effort.
Jan 15, 2009 - 1:19 pm 11. Ernie:I’m really surprised that more people, from my generation, haven’t sounded off on this. I was in HS class of ‘63 in Houston TX & below 70% (that’s percentage, NOT percentile) was failing. If your average of tests, projects, assignments, etc. was below that – or if you failed the final exam, you failed & did the class over. I know, because I had to re-take solid geometry in summer school.
I agree that the unions, NEA, etc. have done a real dis-service to government schools. Along with the idiotic emphasis on diversity, grading on a curve and lowering the standards to the lowest common denominator, it has resulted in most HS graduates having about the equivalent of a 7th or 8th grade education in ’50s & early ’60s.
I know what I’ve written is just my opinion, but it’s based on reviewing hundreds of resumes, interviewing a bunch of people, hiring 10 or 12 & even firing a couple, over the last 20 years of my working life – some HS grads, some college grads & most all couldn’t find their a## with both hands.
Ernie
Jan 15, 2009 - 1:24 pm 12. deguello:POlutocrat:Pay attention and realize how wrong(fooled) you are.First of all”diversity’and globalism are two of the justifying and self-reinforcing ideologies of post modern capitalism,as racism,and manifest destiny were for the gilded age plutocracy. Diversity enables them to pose as anti-racist crusaders,while continuing policies that destroy jobs and manufacturing over here.The US economic system has already been dumped by ignorant voters:who do you think voted for Obama.? Obama is backed by the wallst. plutocracy, like Soros, Rubin, etc, who have figured out that to stay rich, and become entrenched ruling class,you pose as liberals,and destroy other’s opportunity by turning over the schools,to utopian sentimentalist,obscurantist idiots,whose academic liberalism ruins the school through bad teaching methods. This is EXACTLY what New york City’s plutocrat mayor Bloomberg has done.Don’t take my word for it;read Sol Stern’s articles in City Journal, a conservative urban policy magazine.The modern globalist doesn’t care where he makes hs money as long as he makes it(outsourcing),and will back any kind of corrupting cultural product(such as rap and madonna)no matter how destructive,as long as they get rich from it.Dick Riorden and you are to be congratulated for trying to get the schools to teach English,yet your efforts are subverted by marketeers(including large corporations) who hang out “se habla espanol ” signs to pander to the english ignorant,for the sake of a few bucks,rather than insist that their clientele speak english.It’s time for folks like you to wake up and realize that our ruling elite like the Roman elite,no longer cares for our nation except to control it as it exploits it, and that the most effective way to do that is through ignorance.
Jan 15, 2009 - 3:16 pm 13. bobby b:Ms. Rubin, I generally enjoy reading your work, find it to be well-supported by your citation to fact, and, since I’m a fellow traveler, agree with your conclusions, whether stated or unstated.
But I do note that you’ve not included any explanation of the rationale for the six-point curve in your article.
I’m assuming the board went to that system for a reason, and, if it did so for the most-often-cited reason, then it acted in a manner very consistent with a “we need more rigor in education, not less” philosophy – a philosophy with which many here might emphasize. It seems out of character to be reading here, in approving tones, about parents who want their children to be cut some slack.
In any case, I’m left wondering who the bad guys really are in this story.
Jan 15, 2009 - 6:01 pm 14. WWTSS? (what would thomas sowell say?):A quick couple of questions here: Would having the 6-point scale cause teachers to adjust their grading upwards, resulting in a distribution of grades roughly equivalent to schools using a 10-point scale? And secondly: What was the rationale for having a 6-point scale in the first place? To be different, unique, and etc?
Jan 15, 2009 - 6:45 pm 15. bobby b:“Empathize.”
Not “emphasize.”
Coffee. Need more coffee . . .
Jan 15, 2009 - 7:22 pm 16. Wendy Laubach:First, hats off to Bill and Parent for sensible posts on the broader issues in education.
Back to the narrower issue of grade scales: my high school in Houston, Texas, used number grades on tests then converted them to letter grades for the semester (93-100 = A and so on), then assigned numbers to the letters (4.0 = A). But students in accelerated classes got 4.4 for an A, to reflect the extra effort. Then students were ranked from 1 through 800 or whatever the student body was — except that for some reason everyone with a 4.0 or above, and there were several dozen, was automatically considered “number 1″ equally.
The system may have been a little crazy, but the school had a good reputation, so the kids with high GPAs had little difficulty with college admissions. The colleges seemed able to determine which GPAs meant something and which didn’t. And of course there were always SAT scores and AP test results to help the colleges interpret the GPAs.
Jan 16, 2009 - 6:46 am