Kehoe's A-F school report card plan gets Senate hearing

By Nolan Haberstroh, Missouri News Network
JEFFERSON CITY — A bill set to implement Gov. Mike Kehoe’s proposed A-F school report cards got mixed responses Tuesday before the Senate Education Committee.
House Bill 2710, sponsored by Rep. Dane Diehl, R-Butler, would mandate the State Board of Education to implement an accountability report card system for public schools.
The system, if implemented, would grade every institution on a one to 100 scale, simplified to an A-F letter grade and made publicly available on the school’s website. School districts would also receive overall grades.
The grading system would apply to both charter and traditional public schools, according to the bill.

The bill “remains true to (the) merits of a simplistic program that most all of the parents are accustomed to across the state,” Diehl said. “An A-F grading scale, one that we think will drive proficiencies across the state and lead to better outcomes.”

The bill aims to create report cards that are easily understood by the public, with plans to include a summary intended for parents and guardians that avoids technical terms.
This summary would identify an institution’s strong suits and weaknesses, show year-to-year progress in student growth and include info on how guardians can engage with their student’s education.
The bill also includes the “Show Me Success Program,” a set of incentives that would grant additional funding to schools excelling in the categories graded by the system, such as academic growth and sustained improvement over time.

Dava-Leigh Brush, a representative for the Missouri Equity Education Partnership, spoke in opposition to the bill, in particular to the financial incentives it intends to offer schools.
“We believe it’s going to widen the equity gap because the incentives are upside down,” Brush said.
The program as currently proposed would reward schools already succeeding while ignoring schools receiving lower grades, a system Brush refers to as a “competition model.”
“(Schools) are a service, so to take the incentive to give more money to schools that are being successful, the money has to come from somewhere,” Brush said. “And that’s going to hurt the schools that are struggling, that need the support.”
“To pit one school against another school, especially when funding is on the line, that is not a sustainable model. It’s going to harm public education across the board,” Brush said.

Rissa Gray, a retired public school teacher and representative for Activate Missouri, an educational assistance nonprofit organization, spoke in favor in of the bill.
“Parents deserve clear and simple information so that they can make informative decisions about their child’s education,” Gray said. “An A-F system makes it easy to see when schools are doing well, and where improvement can be used.”

Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, D-Kansas City, raised concerns that the bill would increase administration cost without meaningfully impacting classrooms.
“My fear is that we continue to grow bureaucracy, we continue to grow administration, overhead for administration,” Nurrenbern said. “Administration has been frameworking less resources directly to the classroom.”
The senator, a former teacher, also questioned the efficacy of the grading scale.
“As somebody who taught for 13 years, A-F is a terrible system as we have it, right?” Nurrenbern said. “I could have a kid that knew way more that was getting a C in my class than the kid that got an A.”
“We want to see growth, we want to see students perform at higher levels, and I’m not sure this bill does anything to get us there,” Nurrenbern said.