Today’s A-F accountability labels provide few meaningful insights regarding our public schools and students. As we have seen in past years, accountability labels are generally better at tracking economically disadvantaged students than they are at measuring how much our children are learning.

Parents and communities want students to be prepared for the future and engaged in their learning. Information about schools should focus on how well they are accomplishing those goals. Educators already know which students need help. We should be focused on providing resources and opportunities to students and their teachers that are needed for their success rather than developing additional ways to focus on a standardized test or gimmicky labels.

These new A-F labels will not automatically change student performance in school, nor will they bring solutions to lower-performing schools. Most importantly, new A-F labels tell educators, parents, and communities little if anything new or useful about their local schools.