Episode Details

In September, most U.S. states released their public school “report cards.” These reports are intended to evaluate for parents, community leaders, and policymakers the quality of education being offered across the state. By federal law, report cards must measure academic performance and graduation rates. Of course, these assessments are only helpful if they make sense. Many don’t.  

For example, Ohio’s Department of Education, following a few other states, recently stopped using letter grades on its statewide school report cards. Among the reasons is that lawmakers thought that an “F” just sounded too harsh. Now, the Ohio school report card is based on a “star” system. However, like real stars that seem to float in midair, the star system is based on a made-up and confusing “point” system. According to the chart that “explains” the scores, 4.5 stars may be equal to 4.125 points but not lower than 3.625 points.  

U.S. schools were struggling before the pandemic, and they haven’t gotten much better. The White House recently sounded the alarm about the chronic absenteeism in public schools, something that skyrocketed during the pandemic and has not significantly improved since, and its strong correlation to worsening math and reading scores across the country. Only 32% of American fourth graders are considered “proficient” in reading. 

Still, unless a problem is properly understood, it cannot be helpfully addressed. State report cards should be helpful in diagnosing the crises facing public education, but they aren’t. In fact, they seem almost intentionally unhelpful. For example, last year’s report card for Ohio rated almost 90% of school districts as “meeting state standards.” However, the same report card, if you know where to click, reported that almost 40% of Ohio’s third graders are not proficient in reading.  

Ohio’s school report card doesn’t exactly evaluate student competencies in academic subjects at all. Three out of five stars instead marks (1) progress from the previous year’s report card, (indicating that a terrible year was followed by a merely bad year), (2) a “closing the gap” for minority populations (which also could be an indication of an incremental gain rather than success), and (3) overall graduation rates, which includes “joining the military” or becoming an apprentice. In other words, not actually passing required exams. 

Partly to blame is a shift in how we think about education across the board; a shift that trickled down from institutions of higher learning to now infect public schools. As T.S. Eliot observed, every philosophy of