Chapter 16: The Fallacy of School Grades: Exploring the Myth That Public Shaming Leads to School Improvement¹

In 2015, North Carolina released its first round of letter grades intended to indicate the academic quality of each public school in the state. As the state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) explained, “Through accountability, North Carolinians can see how students are performing at the school, district and state levels” (NCDPI, 2015a, p.1). The first DPI grade book included 2,441 public schools rated on a 15-point scale. One hundred and fifty-eight schools received A’s, 584 received B’s, 1,022 received C’s, and 682 received a grade of D or F (NCDPI, 2015b). Critics were quick to point out the many flaws of a system that attempts to sum up an entire school in a single data point that is solely based on testing performance, and that does not take into account any of the contextual or student variables teachers work to address each day. But it is the justification provided by policymakers that offers the foundation for the myth we focus on in this chapter. The myth we are addressing is the idea that publicly grading schools provides a clear picture of a school’s quality and ultimately leads to school improvement.