Northwood Principal Reflects On School Grades, Challenges, Opportunities

Recently, the state released the annual A-F grades for K-12 public schools in North Carolina – but not without some controversy.

The A-F grading system is meant to help determine which schools are succeeding and which are failing. But those grades are heavily weighted toward “achievement” – or students’ scores on standardized tests – and education experts say that’s not the best way to measure the quality of a school. Students’ test scores are as much a function of socioeconomic status as anything else – students living in poverty tend not to do as well as students from wealthy families – so the A-F school grades wind up being little more than a measure of how rich the neighborhood is. (Across the state, you can guess a school’s grade with near-perfect accuracy just by knowing what percentage of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.)

Many experts argue that the grading system should measure “growth” more than “achievement” – rewarding schools for how much students improve from year to year, rather than just their raw scores. That way, for instance, a school whose average score improves from 60 to 75 would get a better grade than a school whose average score drops from 90 to 85. (In the current system, the second school would likely get the higher grade.) Lawmakers in Raleigh considered making that change this year, but ultimately left the grading system the way it is.

That’s the “growth” versus “achievement” debate in a nutshell. But that’s not the end of it: “growth” advocates and “achievement” advocates do both agree on the use of standardized test scores as the measure of success, and there are still other experts who say they’re skeptical whether we should be using standardized tests at all.

How should we be measuring the quality of a school? If you’re a parent trying to decide whether a school is good or bad, what questions should you be asking? What should you be looking for?

Justin Bartholomew is the principal of Northwood High School in Chatham County. Last week, he spoke with WCHL’s Aaron Keck about the grading system and the best measure of school quality – as well as how schools are combating a teacher shortage and other challenges, and how they’re taking advantage of new opportunities for better learning.

Listen to their conversation.