Public Schools Are on the Ballot: Why Gina Hinojosa’s Campaign Matters, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. June 8, 2026

Public Schools Are on the Ballot: Why Gina Hinojosa’s Campaign Matters

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 8, 2026

Today’s news about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa’s
launch of “Team Texas Public Schools” could not come at a more urgent moment. Across Texas, school communities are being forc
ed to confront an unthinkable reality: neighborhood schools—beloved places where generations of children have learned, played, been fed, been loved, and been known—are being closed, consolidated, and destabilized.

Emilio, Gina, & me

It was an honor to stand with Gina today at the press conference she held at Pease Elementary this morning. CBS Austin below recorded the event so that you can view it, at least in part.

Here in Austin, the pain is immediate. Ten schools are closing. Families are grieving not simply the loss of buildings, but the loss of community, continuity, trust, and belonging. Anyone who has ever walked the halls of a neighborhood public school knows that a school is never just a school. It is where children learn their own worth. It is where teachers become lifelines. It is where parents build relationships. It is where democracy begins, one classroom, one child, one family at a time.

That is why Hinojosa’s words today matter: “It is not just you.” Austin families are not alone. This is happening across Texas. It is happening in communities large and small, urban and rural, Black, Brown, white, immigrant, working-class, and middle-class. It is happening because our public schools have been pushed to the brink by policy choices—choices that have starved districts, demoralized educators, politicized curriculum, over-tested children, and opened the door to privatization.

Let us be clear: school closures are not natural disasters. They are political outcomes.

For years, Texas leaders have told us that there is no money for public schools while finding money for vouchers, border militarization, tax giveaways, political theater, and the steady expansion of private interests into the public sphere. They have manufactured crisis and then offered privatization as the cure. 

They have treated our children’s schools as though they were expendable, especially when those schools serve communities of color, working families, emergent bilingual students, students with disabilities, and children whose parents lack the political power of wealthy donors.

This is why the fight for public education is inseparable from the fight for democracy.

Public schools are one of the last great public institutions where we still gather across difference. They belong to all of us. They are funded by all of us. They serve the common good. When they are weakened, the entire civic fabric weakens. When they are closed, communities lose anchors. When public dollars are diverted to private schools, the children left behind are our children, our neighbors, our students, our future.

Gina Hinojosa’s campaign speaks directly to this crisis because her own public life began in the struggle to save a neighborhood school. As a former Austin ISD trustee, a state legislator, a mother, and a longtime defender of public education, she understands that schools are not line items on a spreadsheet. They are living institutions. They carry history, memory, culture, language, and hope.

Her critique of vouchers as a scam resonates because vouchers do not create real choice for most families. They subsidize private options for some while draining resources from the public schools that educate the overwhelming majority of Texas children. 

They do not guarantee transportation. 

They do not guarantee admission. 

They do not guarantee services for children with disabilities. 

They do not guarantee accountability. 

What they do guarantee is that public money will flow away from public institutions at the very moment those institutions are being told to do more with less.

And the A–F accountability system, as Hinojosa rightly notes, has become part of this machinery. A state agency can design the test, control the rating system, shift the rules, and then declare schools “failing”—often without acknowledging the structural underfunding, poverty, language inequities, and policy instability that shape school outcomes. This is not accountability in any meaningful democratic sense. It is a system that too often punishes the very communities that deserve the most investment.

This is why voting matters.

We cannot mourn school closures and then stay home on Election Day. We cannot say we love teachers and then fail to defend them at the ballot box. We cannot lament what is happening to our children’s schools while allowing the same political leadership to continue dismantling them.

Getting out the vote is not a slogan. It is a responsibility. It means checking our registration, having a voting plan. It means helping our students, families, neighbors, elders, and young people understand what is at stake. It means offering rides, making calls, knocking on doors, sharing information, and refusing cynicism. It means remembering that democracy is not something we possess once and for all; it is something we practice, protect, and renew.

Texas is not a lost cause. Texas is a living struggle. And we are worthy foes against the oligarchs.

Every school closure meeting, every parent testimony, every teacher who stays late, every student who speaks up, every community member who refuses to accept austerity as destiny—these are signs that people still believe in the public good. They still believe that our children deserve better. They still believe that a multiracial, multilingual, working-family Texas has the right to govern itself.

This election must be about more than personalities. It must be about whether Texas will continue down the road of privatization, underfunding, censorship, and manufactured crisis—or whether we will choose a future rooted in public schools, public accountability, and public care.

Our children are watching. Our teachers are exhausted. Our families are hurting. Our communities are organizing.

Now we must vote like our schools depend on it—because they do.

Hinojosa launches program to fight Texas school closures, citing public school crisis

by Jahmal Kennedy | Mon, June 8, 2026 at 5:08 PM CBS Austin



Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa in Austin Monday, June 8, 2026.

As school districts across Texas, including Austin ISD, face budget crises and the threat of campus closures, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa is launching a new effort she says is aimed at helping communities fight back.

Hinojosa said Texas public schools are in dire condition.

“I will tell you that our public schools are on life support right now,” she said.

ALSO "It hurts": Austin ISD families look to keep community alive on final day for 10 campuses

Hinojosa announced a nonpartisan organizing program called Team Texas Public Schools. The program is designed to train parents, teachers and administrators to fight school closures in communities “getting hit the hardest.”

“Ten schools in this city alone in the school district are shutting down, but it is happening all over this state,” Hinojosa said.

Asked about Austin ISD’s budget process and closures, Hinojosa said, “WhatI think is important for the people of Austin to understand as they are in the trenches fighting this fight is that it is not just you.”

She also blamed Gov. Greg Abbott for the situation, saying, “And it is important for supporters of our public schools for parents and teachers to understand that Greg Abbott meant for this to happen.”

Abbott, Hinojosa’s November opponent, has focused his K-12 agenda on school vouchers in recent years. In February, Abbott celebrated what his office called “record-breaking school choice demand” after more than 100,000 families applied for vouchers.

Abbott said of vouchers: “Through this program, families will receive funds to send their children to a school that is the best fit for them.”

However, University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Keys Adair studies elementary and early childhood education, and says, "vouchers are definitely diverting funds from public neighborhood elementary schools."

She also added, "it seems like in this voucher conversation, oh, it will allow all families to be able to choose where they go to school. But we know that that's not what's happening," said Adair. She added more affluent families are more likely to get a voucher and said, "So in that case, you're furthering the kind of pressure on teachers and we're furthering the like lack of resources that we're offering to children who need it most."

Hinojosa said she opposes that approach.

“I don't believe in public school vouchers,” she said. Hinojosa even called it a "scam."

Austin ISD parent and former district principal Claudia Kramer Santamaria said she believes Hinojosa is the right advocate for Texas public schools.

“We understand as former principal and teacher that we needed to really have an advocate and I think that's what failed,” Santamaria said.

Hinojosa also criticized Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath for what she called a “rigged” A-F report card system, saying Morath gets to "make the [STAAR] test, rate the test, look at results, and then decide who fails and who passes," and added "And he rigs it to make it show what he wants it to show. And he wants it to show that our Texas public schools aren't strong. And he wants it to show that privatization is a better option."

Hinojosa said that if she becomes governor she would replace Morath.

Austin’s Children Deserve More Than A Test Score, by María del Carmen Unda & Raul Longoria

Congratulations to Dr. María del Carmen Unda and Raul Longoria for this powerful and timely piece in the Texas Observer. You’ve spoken a truth we have long known: test scores measure poverty far more reliably than they measure learning. 

So why punish the very children and communities already carrying the heaviest burdens—other than to continue filing the deep, bottomless pockets of the testing industrial complex?

Thank you for lifting up the voices of Austin’s students, families, and educators, and for reminding us that partnership—not punishment—is the path to real educational justice.

-Angela Valenzuela

Austin’s Children Deserve More Than A Test Score: The city's “F” schools overwhelmingly serve mostly low-income African-American and Hispanic children 

by María del Carmen Unda & Raul Longoria | September 24, 2025 | Texas Observer

Earlier this month, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced that 12 Austin-area schools with an “F” rating could be closed. For many families, this isn’t just a policy decision—it’s a direct threat to thousands of children’s educational stability and their communities’ future. 

The affected schools, all part of Austin Independent School District (AISD) received three consecutive failing grades under the state’s accountability system tied to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exam. TEA ordered the campuses to submit improvement plans by mid-November, which could involve major staffing changes or closures. The schools include Winn Montessori, Barrington, Dawson, Linder, Oak Springs, Pecan Springs, Sanchez, Widen, Wooldridge, Bedichek, Martin, and Paredes. As education researchers and community advocates, we know that school ratings often reveal more about poverty than about student learning. Decades of research show that standardized tests don’t measure intellect, creativity, or resilience. They measure zip codes. Numerous studies also highlight the direct ties between the testing industry and the prison industrial complex.

The problem is clear: Austin’s “F” schools overwhelmingly serve mostly low-income African-American and Hispanic children. Closing them on the basis of a flawed metric sends one message: Your community does not matter. 

SCHOOL BUSES IN AUSTIN (SHUTTERSTOCK)

More specifically, data from the Texas Academic Performance Report outlines that the twelve Austin ISD campuses at risk of closure or major intervention serve predominantly low-income African-American and Hispanic student populations (see a full chart here): At these campuses, between 78 percent and 97 percent of students are classified as economically disadvantaged, with most schools exceeding 90 percent. This strongly suggests that socioeconomic status, not instructional quality, is the most consistent predictor of school ratings. Research has long demonstrated that poverty shapes educational outcomes through limited access to resources, higher mobility rates, and increased exposure to stressors outside of school. The racial and ethnic composition of these same schools is between 57 percent and 91 percent Hispanic, while African-American enrollment ranges from 1.9 percent to nearly 39 percent. The clustering of F-rated schools in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods highlights the racialized nature of standardized testing outcomes, aligning with scholarship that critiques accountability systems as mechanisms that reproduce racial and class stratification. 

TEA’s accountability system disproportionately penalizes schools that serve economically disadvantaged students of color. All twelve schools identified for improvement or closure received failing (“F”) ratings, yet their student demographics highlight structural inequities rather than deficiencies in teaching or learning. 

Parents and teachers have long known what research confirms: Standardized testing is a poor predictor of success. It rewards test-taking strategies, not curiosity. It privileges students with resources, tutors, and stability at home, while penalizing those navigating poverty, language barriers, or trauma. 

Standardized testing has become a billion-dollar business. In 2013, TEA awarded Pearson a $462 million contract, followed by a $280 million contract with Education Testing Services. Nationally, 45 states spend a combined $669 million annually on testing contracts. These corporations reap massive profits, yet there is no evidence that more standardized testing improves student learning or narrows achievement gaps. What these tests do measure—reliably—is the ability of corporations to siphon resources away from Texas students, teachers, and communities.

Instead of doubling down on testing, TEA should reduce the number of exams and provide real support. Before closing schools, the agency must engage communities in honest conversations about what children need to thrive—whether it’s more bilingual staff, smaller classes, or after-school programs. 

Austin’s children deserve more than a test score. Closing schools will not build stronger communities. Listening to them will. TEA must choose partnership over punishment. 

A growing body of scholarship urges states to move beyond single test scores and adopt multiple measures of accountability. Such systems better capture the breadth of student learning by incorporating graduation rates, college and career readiness, access to qualified teachers, and school climate. Authentic assessments—such as project- and portfolio-based evaluations—offer viable alternatives that measure higher-order thinking and student creativity while remaining compliant with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which explicitly authorizes states to integrate portfolios, extended performance tasks, and adaptive assessments into their accountability systems. Despite this flexibility, Texas continues to rely almost exclusively on high-stakes standardized tests, ignoring well-established recommendations for more equitable, comprehensive approaches to evaluating student learning and school quality. 

At the state policy level, Texas must fundamentally rethink accountability. Policymakers, TEA, and school leaders should establish school-based teams to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data, ensuring that decisions are grounded in the realities of students, families, and educators. 

These efforts must prioritize schools with the greatest needs and the fewest resources, offering sustained support rather than punitive closures. Specifically, TEA should end costly assessment contracts with for-profit corporations and redirect those funds into classrooms, counseling services, culturally relevant curricula, and community engagement initiatives that actually strengthen schools. 

Dr. MARÍA DEL CARMEN UNDA is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas. Her research examines education policymaking and access in K–12 schools, with a focus on the experiences of students of color.

Raul ‘Neto’ Longoria is a candidate for the Texas State Board of Education, District 5. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and he has dedicated his career to Austin ISD as a bilingual special education teacher and parent support specialist.

"The Long Fight for Meaningful Assessment in Texas: From TAAS to HB 4 and Beyond" by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Long Fight for Meaningful Assessment in Texas: From TAAS 

to House Bill 4 and Beyond

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

House Bill 4 represents a promising and long-overdue step toward meaningful reform of Texas’ public school accountability system, which currently relies too heavily on the STAAR exam. The late Rice University professor, Dr. Linda McNeil, and I published on this very topic 25 years ago (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000). 

I authored an anthology on this in 2004, published by the State University of New York Press (Valenzuela, 2004). We worked with former Texas State Rep. Dora Olivo, filing a bill on holistic assessment in the 2001 legislature. It actually passed out of the Texas House. This, despite personal phone calls from President George W. Bush to House members in real time. 

Rep. Olivo’s bill stood little chance. After all, "W" was on a mission to pass what would become the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a sweeping federal mandate that ushered high-stakes testing into every classroom and codified accountability as the cornerstone of public education policy.

Believe me when I say—I’ve given over two decades of my life to this struggle. My older daughter, then just an elementary school student, testified before the Texas Legislature about the harms of high-stakes testing. On the day she courageously refused to take the exam, she wrote a heartfelt letter to President George W. Bush, pleading for change. This fight is not just professional for me—it’s deeply personal. In fact, the very origins of this blog are rooted in that resistance.

By the 2013 legislative session, Dr. Linda McNeil and I had joined forces with Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA), standing alongside a growing coalition of scholars, parents, and advocates committed to transforming our state’s accountability system. Over time, that chorus of resistance only grew louder. I’ve been especially heartened to see Raise Your Hand Texas (RYHT) take a leadership role in this movement, and I’ve had the privilege of attending several of their events and press conferences that continue to shape the public conversation.

Several aspects of Raise Your Hand Texas’s 2025 report, “Assessment and Accountability: HB 4 Back in the Spotlight,” are especially noteworthy and speak to the significance of this moment (Raise Your Hand Texas, 2025).

First, with all the multi-year, RYHT efforts and data on public opinion on the Texas STAAR System of testing and accountability, House Bill 4, a bipartisan bill, died this legislative session, failing to arrive on the Governor's desk. It was a bipartisan bad idea to begin with.

Second, meaningful assessment was a priority of the entire Texas House of Representatives, as evidenced by the lower bill number, and it still didn't make it.

Last, and relatedly, the show of support by so many authors and co-authors is more than I have ever seen on testing legislation in the history of the legislature, and for that, we should be very encouraged.

Educators, parents, and students have long argued that a single high-stakes test cannot capture the full picture of student learning, school quality, or teacher impact. It's also costly and has filled the pockets of Education Testing Services and Pearson, Inc. to the tune of literally hundreds of millions, probably billions by now, over the past decades (e.g., see McGaughey, 2015).

As Dr. McNeil would often say, "Every testing dollar for the testing companies is one less dollar for public education in Texas."

In a political climate where entire diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and centers are being dismantled and faculty governance stripped away, one has to wonder: if the testing regime is so untouchable, then whose interests beyond the testing companies does it serve?

The truth is, the testing infrastructure is far from neutral. It operates as a powerful mechanism of control—determining what counts as legitimate knowledge, who is deemed successful or deficient, and which schools are rewarded or punished. It elevates compliance over curiosity, standardization over critical thinking, and reinforces a relentless hierarchy that ranks students, educators, schools, and, by association, entire communities as winners or failures.

So yes, we must ask—why not dismantle the testing regime too? In a moment when so much is being undone in the name of “reform,” let's turn the mirror on the system and ask who benefits from the tests, and who is harmed when they have an undue influence on our children’s future?

Enough is enough. For over two decades, we have fought against a testing system that punishes children for the conditions they were born into—a system rooted in racism and classism that reduces vibrant, complex human beings to numbers on a piece of paper (Valenzuela, 2004). 

How many more children must carry the weight of a single test? How many more will internalize failure as casualties in a testing system that is, at its core, both racist and classist (Valenzuela, 2004)? We must begin organizing now for the 90th Texas Legislative Session in 2027. The path to justice in education demands persistence, preparation, and the collective will to dismantle what never served our children in the first place. 

All told, a revised version of HB 4, passed unanimously out of the House Public Education Committee this session. It addressed concerns about limiting the weight of STAAR in A-F campus ratings and introduced more formative assessments that provide timely and actionable data. It also included innovative changes, such as updating postsecondary success indicators and launching local accountability pilot programs, allowing districts to design systems that reflect community values and student engagement beyond the classroom.

The bill’s pivot toward a student-centered accountability system—one that, in addition to academic performance, values growth, character, and civic engagement —is not just a policy shift. It’s a moral course correction. I commend Raise Your Hand Texas for its tireless advocacy in helping us reach this turning point. We now have every reason to be hopeful—and even more reason to keep pushing for a future where every child is seen, heard, and valued far beyond a test score.

References

McGaughey, L. (2015, May 19) Texas set to switch testing vendor, reducing role of British education giant: Pearson had held contract for 15 years, Houston Chronicle, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Texas-set-to-switch-testing-vendor-drops-6271843.php

McNeil, L., & Valenzuela, A. (2000). The harmful impact of the TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability rhetoric. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED443872.pdf

Raise Your Hand Texas. (2025, May 5). Assessment and accountability: HB 4 Back in the Spotlight. https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/assessment-and-accountability-hb-4/

Valenzuela, A. (2004). Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" accountability harms Latino Youth. New York: State University of New York Press.

Op-Ed: Our schools, teachers deserve accountability reform by K. Moulton & A. Valenzuela

We desperately need educational accountability and assessment reform in Texas and here is how Raise Your Hand Texas (RYHT) is leading this legislative session. Then scroll down below to read my co-authored op-ed with Kelli Moulton of RYHT. All of this falls on the heels of advocacy last week as follows (from RYHT's Friday, April 21 Weekly update):

On Thursday, the Texas House Committee on Public Education heard 

 (Bell, K.) and (Allison). Both bills improve the public school assessment and accountability system by limiting the effect of STAAR tests on school district and campus A-F ratings. The bills also add new non-STAAR indicators to the A-F rating calculations in order to paint a more holistic picture of school quality.

Today, Friday, April 21, HB 4402 was voted out favorably from the Texas House Commitee on Public Education. The bill now moves to the Calendars Committee, where members of that committee will schedule a date for the entire House of Representatives to vote on the bill. Here are some key provisions of each bill:

Committee Substitute HB 4402

HB 4402

HB 4514

• Adds three new non-test indicators: Extra- and co-curricular success, parent and student satisfaction, and participation in middle school accelerated math
• Prohibits STAAR scores from accounting for more than 80% of elementary and middle school accountability ratings
• Formalizes through-year assessments starting in 2027-28 school year
• ISDs may offer the STAAR tests in paper format to no more than 1% of their enrolled students
• Creates grants for the development of local accountability systems
• Creates an extra- and co-curricular allotment

Committee Substitute HB 4514: 

• Removes the social studies STAAR test in grade eight
• Adds new PK-8 indicators starting in the 2023-24 school year, including access to enrichment curriculum, participation in extra- and co-curricular activities, state-developed school and student safety surveys, teacher mentoring programs and professional development, chronic absenteeism rates, participation in full-day pre-K, completion of career and technical education courses, and completion of advanced courses
• Removes the overall, aggregate A-F district and campus performance rating
• Prohibits STAAR scores to account for more than 50% of any A-F rating

The research cited within on the public's attitudes toward schools, testing, and accountability is accessible on this February 4, 2022 blog post titled, "Connected Through Our Schools" [Report] on Strong Public Support for Public Education in Texas. Texans with children in schools strongly support public education, in general. Now let's move the needle further and be more holistic and complex in our assessments and understandings of student performance and school performance together with the ratings that attach to them.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

Opinion: Our schools, teachers deserve accountability reform

Kelli Moulton and Angela Valenzuela

April 23, 2023 | Op-Ed | Austin American Statesman

April marks the beginning of STAAR testing season for Texas public school students, and it’s also the start of the final two months of the Texas legislative session. 

We have an opportunity to reimagine a critically important system of public school accountability to ensure greater transparency, reduce the overreliance on one test to assess students, teachers and campuses, and provide a more holistic, meaningful assessment of school performance and student preparation for future success.

Last year we celebrated the gains Texas students demonstrated after two years of online or interrupted in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw students in grades 3-8 notch improved scores in reading and math, a credit to the grit and perseverance of students and their teachers. The progress of our students has impacted their campuses, with 33% of schools and 25% of school districts across the state improving their respective Texas Education Agency (TEA) ratings since the last time ratings were given in 2019.

While we should celebrate the academic gains made under challenging circumstances, we may want to question whether new TEA ratings tell parents everything they want and need to know about their child’s school. Under the current system, our elementary and middle school campuses receive their A-F rating from the TEA based entirely on the STAAR Test – one test, taken on one day. Texas’ accountability system neglects other important measures of how a campus contributes to a students’ academic growth, as well as any measure that would give insight into students’ mental health, campus culture or safety, family engagement, or teacher quality. 

A single test cannot measure what matters about our students’ academic success and campus effectiveness. We can and must do better.

Thankfully, state lawmakers have a chance to improve the system by hearing and passing several key bills, some which reflect an evidence-based and comprehensive effort to examine and recommend improvements to the state’s accountability system for public schools.

For more than 18 months, Measure What Matters connected with more than 15,600 parents, teachers, students, business leaders, policy experts and community leaders to learn what should be added to the equation for a more thorough, thoughtful and useful system of testing and accountability. 

Among the four key findings of this effort that are addressed in pending legislation: The state overemphasizes the STAAR tests in its current accountability system. High-stakes consequences of one test on one day place unnecessary, excessive pressure on students. By excluding highly valuable indicators of school quality and performance, parents receive an incomplete assessment of a school’s and student’s performance. A single, averaged letter grade of A-F oversimplifies the work of teachers, students and campus leaders. 

Yes, Texans believe in accountability. We can and should assess our public schools and students, but we can and must do better in doing so. More than 80% of respondents to Raise Your Hand Texas’ survey said they do not believe the STAAR test alone can effectively determine if their child’s school is good or not, and only 1% felt like the STAAR was a very accurate measure of school quality.

As lawmakers finish their work in Austin this spring, let’s encourage them to measure what matters and do right by public schools and their students.

Moulton serves as the Measure What Matters Council Chair, as well as executive superintendent at the Texas Association of School Administrators. Valenzuela is a professor at the University of Texas.

Flexibility and relaxing due dates is what grading should have always been about. In a more perfect world, we would also be less about grading and more about evaluation. For this to happen, teachers need smaller class sizes and time during the week to develop curriculum and to work one-on-one with students. This is a funding issue since all of this obviously comes at a cost.

There is definitely an ongoing debate about grading students, as you can read here. I land on the side that students will rise to the level of, and even exceed, our expectations when given the opportunity to own their own learning. Here is where pedagogies like Critical Race Theory, project-based learning, participatory action research, culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies, abolitionist teaching, and any kind of learning that promotes students asking questions, thinking deeply, developing ideas, sharing ideas, and assuming tasks that are meaningful to them.

And as we think about assessment, we should think deeply about authentic assessment that involves students and teachers in meaningful tasks where "grading" is more a relationship than an outcome. This is what I see reflected in the piece below.

A clear advantage is overcoming our many years of test-driven schooling. Drilling phonics into students' heads for a test is a far cry from assessing students' actual comprehension of the material. It's one thing to decode. It's yet another to be able to explain what they've "read." If they can't explain what they've just read, then they actually cannot read.

At a deeper level, inasmuch as students are also youth of color, we must always seek to affirm and even celebrate their identities, cultures, and languages—albeit while also acknowledging and being responsive to the traumas they have faced both as members of historically marginalized groups in society and ongoing ones as a result of the pandemic. 

I am definitely glad to see that a serious debate about grading students—as well as schools themselves—is taking place today. While test-optional college admissions has encouraged this conversation at the higher education level, more must be done. We need to have a broader conversation focused on the costs and benefits of evaluating, as opposed to grading, or some combination of the two.

-Angela Valenzuela 

Teachers second-guess letter grades as they search for a fairer way

Across the country, educators are experimenting with a more tolerant grading system

By Valerie Strauss

 and 

Donna St. George

 

February 28, 2022 at 8:11 a.m. EST

“We’re aligning the letter grade with actual learning,” says Joshua Moreno, who works in the Alhambra Unified School District in Southern California. “It’s sad that it had to be for a worldwide pandemic to get people to look at this, but at the same time, it’s good that it’s happening. It had to.” (tupungato/iStock)

Sixteen-year-old Sam Luo nearly panicked when he learned about his Advanced Placement English Language teacher’s grading system at his California high school. Gone was the 100-point system he knew well. Homework, extra credit, behavior — they would no longer count.

His teacher, Joshua Moreno, among a few other instructors, grades students on a 50-point scale — 10 points for each of the A-F letter grades — a change from giving so much weight to a failing grade, with Fs ranging from 60 points down to zero. Students can retake exams and redo assignments but only after scrutinizing their own mistakes. The goal is to measure only whether the student has learned the material.

What he and other educators are doing is part of a revolution in grading, one that started years before the coronavirus pandemic in some school districts but that has taken on new urgency as educators around the country think twice about assigning those judgmental letters A-F to students whose schooling has been disrupted for two years.

Instructors typically penalize children for late, incomplete or sloppy work, finding many opportunities (via homework and incremental tests) throughout the semester to do so, scholars say. These strictures, studies have shown, unfairly privilege one type of student — the kind with means, a supportive family, good nutrition, mental well-being and a peaceable home life — over others who may work after school, have a defective laptop or lack a desk and a quiet space to spit-shine their schoolwork every night. And though many districts handed out technology to students and beefed up Internet service during the pandemic, the digital “homework gap” is still affecting low-income families far more than families earning more.

Districts around the country — from California to Virginia and more — are experimenting to level the competition and focus on what experts think matters most: What should a grade represent? How can grades be used to motivate students to learn and retain information? How can grading be equitable? The change has sparked headlines decrying the elimination of D’s and F’s. But many teachers had already stopped giving those grades during the pandemic.

“We’re aligning the letter grade with actual learning,” said Moreno, who works in the Alhambra Unified School District in Southern California. “It’s sad that it had to be for a worldwide pandemic to get people to look at this, but at the same time, it’s good that it’s happening. It had to.”

Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

Some, such as Santa Fe Public Schools in New Mexico, are moving to standards-based grading, which measures student performance on benchmarks, sometimes with number grades from 1 to 4; teachers there will use new specific standards set by the state’s education department to assess student performance.

“A grade should represent learning, not behavior,” said Nick Hoover, principal of Cantwell’s Bridge Middle School in the Appoquinimink District in Delaware, which is just starting an overhaul of its own policies. “Look at someone who gets a B. It could be an A student who turned in work late, or a student who averages out at 88 percent in academic work but turns in work on time. That grade doesn’t really represent how much that student has learned.” He added, “We still want to report behavior” — meaning punctuality and other parts of performance — but said it shouldn’t shape how a student is judged on a transcript.

Patrick Truman, a science teacher in Montgomery County, Md., since 2013 and an educator for more than 20 years, offers a hypothetical: Consider a student with marginal motivation who gets 30 points — an F — on their first test. “If you get a couple of really poor grades, you can’t recover,” he said. “Kids give up.”

Grading experts say that since the pandemic closed schools in March 2020, they have been bombarded with requests for help from administrators seeking to change what has been common practice for generations. One of these experts is Joe Feldman, whose book “Grading for Equity: What It is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms” (2018) has become a bible for many revising their practices. Feldman said that schools “perpetuate very antiquated and ineffective and even harmful ways of grading,” because there is no or little training on how to grade for students in teacher preparation courses.

The old ways are not without their defenders. Some districts have encountered pushback from teachers and parents who worry the new approach is too easy for students, or too difficult. That’s what Luo thought when he walked into Moreno’s AP English class. Because grades are based only on certain tests and assignments, he said he feared it was “a high-stakes system that would cause a lot of anxiety.”

Moreno said his grading approach is intended, rather, to make students own their learning. There is “a misunderstanding that this is not as rigorous as the traditional system,” he said.

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He likens it to sports. In English classes, all writing — in and out of class — is for practice. No points. “When it’s time for an essay or a presentation or a Socratic seminar, I call that game time,” Moreno said. “You get points.” But a competitive season is "not just one game. If you aren’t happy with what happened in that game, I say, ‘Let’s meet. Let’s conference. Tell me how you are going to work to learn what you missed.’ We can do another game.”

Luo said that the most important change for him in Moreno’s grading system has been that, instead of focusing on formatting his assignments correctly and punctually, he has been forced to think about his learning more deeply and, as a result, he absorbs more information and gets graded on his best work. He observed that he witnesses kids ask their English teachers every year, “How do I write a thesis? How do I write a body paragraph?” — even though they’ve ostensibly learned this skill every year starting in middle school. “With this, as we improve, we are internalizing this information better.”

Still, Luo said, he doesn’t think the system will work for every student. “For students who want to slack off or are not motivated to learn, this class will probably be very enticing. Assignments aren’t graded. Due dates are soft. They will think they can get away with things.”

Other concerns about this kind of grading system were raised by teachers at Wakefield High School in Arlington Public Schools in Northern Virginia after administrators there announced they were considering a new assessment system that would eliminate graded homework and make other changes. One of them may be that any “remediations” of a grade could be undertaken only with a formal one-on-one exchange between student and teacher.

In an open letter that was unsigned, teachers said such a system places new burdens on them. For example, they don’t have time to talk to each student about every grade change. Teachers are already overworked. They face large classes, have little planning time and, with the pandemic, often take over classes for sick colleagues.

The letter also says having nongraded homework makes it more difficult to foster good behaviors and nonacademic skills in students.

“The changes, if implemented, will ... result in the decline of high expectations and rigor in the classroom,” the Arlington teachers said. Students need incentives to “develop organizational, time and stress management skills and grow as responsible, civically engaged, and considerate young adults.”

Bridget Loft, Arlington schools’ chief academic officer, said officials are now considering what to do “without making it feel like it is something being forced upon people. We are thinking about what might be better for students in the long run and how to bring in more equitable experiences.”

Rick Wormeli, a former National Board Certified teacher and now a consultant on classroom practice and grading systems, and others said that report cards should capture academic and nonacademic performance in different ways. A-F grades should be academic, and other habits and behaviors can be recorded through notes or other numerical or alphabetical symbols.

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That doesn’t mean, Wormeli and other grading reformers say, that students can get away without doing work. With the new systems, they can still flunk, and they are still responsible for making academic progress.

“I would never want to remove the burden of a child’s learning from his or her shoulders,” Wormeli said. “They have to do the work. But if we read the research about executive functioning — how do you instill moral fiber, time management, perseverance, tenacity? — none of it, not one bit of it, says, ‘yeah, use your grades to do it.’ ”

Each element of grading changes presents challenges. Truman allows students to retake exams. “Many things in life are reassessable,” he said. “Can you imagine if you had one shot at your driver’s license? That’s not the real world.”

But in college, many students don’t get that opportunity. Truman said he has heard about University of Maryland professors who feel they need to remind students from the state’s largest school system that college rules are less forgiving: There are no do-overs. Similarly, he’s heard of students asking professors: “When is the reassessment?”

Another example is softening deadlines of assignments, allowing students to turn them in when they can. Opponents say this practice harms efforts to instill responsibility in students and leads to students falling behind in their work. Supporters say that students often don’t turn in work because they don’t understand it, or have after-school or night jobs, or lack adequate technology or Internet service to complete assignments. But in class, they are forced to move ahead with work they haven’t mastered, making things worse.

The issue of equity runs through the charged conversation about grading. The Wakefield teachers said that some of the proposed changes in Arlington would have “a detrimental impact” toward achieving educational equity in part because “we are providing [lower-performing students] with a variety of excuses and/or enabling them to ‘game the system,’ prompting them to expect the least of themselves in terms of effort, results, and responsibility.”

Wormeli and others said the opposite is what happens — that students are motivated when they feel some ownership of the learning process.

At Wakefield High School, teacher Nisha Sensharma said she began experimenting with different grading systems about seven years ago, after she realized how stressed her students were about grades.

She began to relax due dates for assignments to give students more time to complete them, and, she said, she found that it “helped a little.” Then, she said, she cut back on the amount of homework and found “the kids were happier” and learning just as much. She began teaching mindfulness.

“I really got into social-emotional learning. What bothered me was motivation. And when I asked kids to answer, ‘Why am I in school,’ and ‘What do I want to get from school,’ there was a lot of silence for a long time. And then they say, ‘I want to get the best grade. I want to get into college.’”

So she changed her curriculum to create lessons “that really connected with the kids.” And she began to look at accountability in different ways. “If I expect kids to use social-emotional skills and be self-directed and meet due dates, I need to make some changes,” she said.

She experimented with how she assigned grades and homework. She began giving more feedback to students about their work and behavior, hoping that they would use the information to improve their mind-sets and learning process. Unfortunately, she said, about half of her students don’t look at her feedback and are still overly concerned with grades.

“That’s the grading system we created,” she said. “I think if we all made a change, that would make a big difference for kids.”