The State of North Carolina recently released the single letter grades for all of its schools. Headlines read “Local Primary School gets a D.” The results upset a lot of people and left others confused.

President Bush started the journey toward a process of measuring how well students were doing when he signed the “No Child Left Behind” law of 2002. Concerned that other countries’ schools were working better than ours, he pointed out that in many parts of our country no one gathered data about which schools were really doing a poor job or which ones were doing a good job and could be used as role models for others. Since then, the effort has expanded, using tools that measured at graduation such things as college and career readiness.

North Carolina had started detailed and comprehensive monitoring of how well its schools were doing many years before.

So what is the fuss about?

Simply put, I think two things are wrong. First, we are holding schools responsible for things outside their control. Second, our North Carolina legislature requires that a school’s many page evaluation be boiled down to a single letter grade composed of one-fifth how well students did one year to the next, and four-fifths how well the students did overall.

One example of the problem caused by combining different measurements into one letter grade can be seen in a recent headline from the North Carolina Charlotte Observer: “NC public school letter grades reflect wealth of students’ families.” The headline is accurate – the best predictor of a school’s single letter grade score was family income of its students. If this is so, are we measuring the success or failure of the school? Or are we measuring where children are, given many social factors, one of which is the school? And if this is what we are measuring, why are we giving the school a single letter grade which does not reflect the life circumstances of the student population, and the success or failure of the teachers of those specific kids?

Think about how it would be as if your doctor told you she is proud of you for extending your life because you were now sticking to your diet and exercise plan, and had stopped smoking. She said your diabetes was greatly improved, but she was giving you an “F” anyway because other people did not have diabetes in the first place, and have a longer life expectancy. That is how North Carolina’s single letter school grading system works.

Poverty impacts schools. Right at 1 out of 5 North Carolinians are classified as financially “poor.” Being “poor” is defined as annual income of $23,283 or less for a family of four. Do the math – you have enough money to pay $4 per meal per family member for three meals a day, seven days a week. Nothing is left for rent, electricity, water, medical care, transportation, Internet, books, and so forth.

In a school full of low income kids, is the place they go to school being graded for its effectiveness, or is something else being measured and reported?

How much better it would be if instead of a single letter grade the same information were reported as something like this: “Central Middle School serves a ‘high poverty’ student population. Compared to other schools serving the same population, it did a great job of educating students in math and English in grades 6 and 7 and has room for improvement in grades 8. The school scored in the top half of all ‘high poverty’ schools in North Carolina, and in the 40th percentile nationally. The school did a high quality job of educating students for whom English is a Second Language (ESL), scoring in the top 10 percent in the state. The school’s per-student budget is $7,516, compared to the statewide average of $8,312. When compared to other North Carolina schools with similar demographics, Central Middle School performed in the top one-fifth.”

The state has all the data needed to deliver that kind of feedback to administration and parents – but instead, because of the requirements of the state legislature it says, “Central Middle School gets a D.”

I think the single letter school grading system gets an “F,” and the legislature should take remedial classes on communication.

Fran Koster lives in Kannapolis. To see the sources of facts used in this article, and learn of other successful money and life saving programs that can be implemented locally to create a better future for our country, go to www.TheOptimisticFuturist.org