AUGUSTA — On Wednesday, every Maine public school will get a report card with one grade. Some schools will get an A, some an F, lots will get a B, C or D.

Following through on what Gov. Paul LePage said during his February State of the State address, the state will release letter grades for all Maine public schools. Schools received their grades Monday.

Area school superintendents criticized the state ranking schools, saying it isn’t helping education.

According to the Maine Department of Education, the goal is to give parents and communities an easy to understand snapshot of how their schools are doing.

Thirteen other states give letter grades to schools. Florida has been giving its schools letter grades for 10 years, and in that time Florida has more schools with A’s and B’s and fewer with D’s and F’s, said Bill Hurwitch, director of Maine’s Statewide Longitudinal Data System.

The grades don’t come from a single piece of data, but a combination of statistics, education department spokesman David Connerty-Marin said Monday. Elementary grades come from reading and math test scores and how much student learning grew from one year to the next. High schools will also be graded on how much student growth increased, math and reading test scores and graduation rates.

Other data included with the high school report cards will include how many graduates went to college, stayed in college and how many needed remediation courses in college.

Historically, schools in wealthier districts, such as Falmouth and Cape Elizabeth, get higher grades than schools from poorer districts, including Lewiston and Auburn. Traditionally, schools from wealthier communities have more students prepared for school and more parents involved in their children’s schools.

Wednesday’s grades will include the so-called “growth model” that will reflect “that not all schools have the same student bodies. For a variety of reasons, students come in at different levels,” Connerty-Marin said. “But what we do expect and want to see is that students are making a year’s progress in a year. We can’t simply accept they’re always below grade level; we need to work to move all students ahead.”

The grades will give credit to schools “for helping students grow, even if students are not meeting standards yet,” he said.

The state grading will also, for the first time, look at the bottom 25 percent of each school and compare how they’re doing compared to the previous year. “Whatever the reason, if students are struggling, are we helping those students to advance?” Connerty-Marin asked.

Area superintendents aren’t buying the state’s reasons for grading schools. “I don’t support it,” Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin said.

Auburn is working to customize learning to ensure every student is learning. “We have our eye on each student,” she said. “A grading system that focus on a once-a-year measurement, a year delayed, is not a fair representation of what schools are doing.”

Grading schools on a snapshot “contradicts the direction that the commissioner laid out,” Grondin said.

Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster said he’s concerned about the grading system because it’s using year-old data. “I have many teachers doing great work that is not reflected in the school grades,” Webster said. Schools with students from wealthier communities “will be measured as more successful than other schools, even if the lower-graded schools are doing better at helping students grow academically.”

Regardless, Lewiston will work with parents and staff to improve grades, Webster said. “I have no doubt that our scores will be improving.”

Sabattus area Superintendent James Hodgkin said grading schools is a “very poor” idea. “Unlike businesses, pitting schools against each other is not an effective way to improve student learning, especially in this depressed economy,” he said.

Teachers don’t need another thing to make them feel bad about what’s happening in school, Hodgkin said.

Critics will correctly say the state’s letter grade won’t tell the whole story of the school, Connerty-Marin said.

But people now look at test scores and graduation rates to judge schools. “This brings in several pieces of data, and still it doesn’t tell the whole story. We want parents, we want communities, to dig deeper, to generate community discussions. We want community parents to ask school officials, ‘Why did we receive this grade? What are we doing to improve?’”

School administrators “have good answers to those questions,” Connerty-Marin said.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

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