Why Giving Schools Letter Grades ......is false reporting and inaccurate

The state of Washington passed legislation to give letter grades to schools, so communities could see which schools in state were failing. Just another way of riding the dead horse and packaging it differently to our public, but ending up in the same place, No movement and a failure to report accurately. You decide for yourself if you feel this is an efficient and accurate measure to give letter grades to schools. Here we go.... 1. One year a school is recognized as a school of distinction. They get to put their banner out for parents to see their children's school is an "A" school. The very next year, the same school that got to put the banner out, now has to take it down because they were identified as a School of Focus. What happened in one year? Did the staff go from great to bad? Did the students get together and decided to quit trying? Can we call this accurate grading? 2. The School District changes school boundaries which removed the poor and minority student out and the affluent students back in. Hold on...this school is now a school of distinction and hangs their banner out in front of their school. But what happened to the kids that were moved out? They were placed tv another school and you won't guess what happened....Yes, the school became a School of Focus. They got a "D" grade just from boundary changes. 3. One of the top high schools in our state has an outstanding graduation rate and is an exemplary school. They have been graded an "A". When asked how they were able to sustain such a high graduation rate, I was told if they aren't going to graduate we get them out of here. Where I asked do they go, we transfer them to the alternative high school. Guess what? The state has given the alternative high school a "D". Making any sense yet?? 4. OSPI the lead agency in the state can not put the dots together, high grad rates for one school, bad grad rates for another....who takes the transfers that are credit deficient. The Legislators don't have a clue what and why schools are being graded. They just know that they have this cool calculation to really get it right. 5. Alternative high schools, my school, Lincoln High School is an alternative high school. We graduated 8-53 grads in 4 yrs. we are a school of focus for our graduation rate. We have been mandated to write a school improvement plan to show how we are going to improve our grad rates. We don't turn students away that we feel we can help. 85% of our kids come to us credit deficient, are we closing the doors on these kids because they might impact our grad %? NO, that is our mission and purpose. The state is mandating thousands of dollars to go into schools and have them come up with plan of improvement. You decide if this is a sufficient way to use the publics' tax dollars.