Turner and state Sen. Luther Olsen’s education policy analyst, Sarah Archibald, who also participated in the design team meetings, said letter grade opponents worried bad grades could stigmatize schools and their students.
Turner said the bigger problem was that in only their first year, the report cards would not be reliable enough to translate into simple grades. Walker “needed to have failing schools in Ds and Fs,” he said, as a pretext for expanding vouchers.
But Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said letter grades were simply an easily understandable shorthand for the rating system’s five official designations, which range from “significantly exceeds expectations” to “fails to meet expectations.”
Indeed, the five designations do lend themselves to the five traditional letter grades. The report cards also rate schools on a 100-point scale, which also often translates into letter grades.
If Walker betrayed the DPI and the accountability team by introducing letter grades, DPI and the team are a bit naive if they thought no one ever would.
But more important is why Walker feels compelled in ways small — using letter grades — and large — basing voucher expansion on School Report Cards — to aggravate a public education establishment already aggravated by his moves to end teacher collective bargaining and cut education funding.
The governor’s voucher proposal was going to be controversial no matter what.
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