Charter School Grades (2013)

A year ago, when this blog was still flying mostly under the radar, I posted the A-F grades of the state’s charter schools. This year, in the wake of Superintendent Barresi saying that she’s “embarrassed” we don’t have more charters and that she’ll “be damned” if we’re going to lose another generation of kids, It’s worth examining them again. Rather than listing grades for each, however, I’ll just show you the trends.

Charter Schools
A	6	23.1%
B	6	23.1%
C	3	11.5%
D	3	11.5%
F	6	23.1%
NA	2	7.7%

All Schools
A	354	19.8%
B	499	28.0%
C	472	26.4%
D	263	14.7%
F	163	9.1%
NA	34	1.9%

Overall, charter schools had a lower percentage of schools with an A or B and a higher percentage of schools with a D or F. With the small sample size (26 schools), it’s really not that different, statistically.

I’ve seen some commentary over the weekend about Harding Charter Prep (of which Barresi was one of the founders) getting a 107 on their report card for an A+ grade. They take pride in the fact that they will take anybody who applies. All that matters is a winning a lottery for admission. While that may be true, details about their student population say a lot about who applies.

Statistic*	Harding Charter	Oklahoma City PS
Free/Reduced Lunch %	42.2%	87.9%
Minority Student %	55.4%	79.9%
Mobility %	0.0%	12.9%
Special Ed %	4.1%	12.1%
Average # of Absences	4.1	10.4

The truth is that HCP does not serve a comparable student population to that of OKCPS as a whole. These data show the benefit of having highly engaged parents. As I did in my post last night, I have listed factors here that impact student achievement. Not having classes in which 1 in 8 students is on an IEP makes a difference. Not having to deal with a lot of absenteeism or students changing schools makes a difference. Having half the poverty level as the whole district makes a difference.

On the other hand, since Harding’s population is chosen at random, let’s get the word out to a wider swath of students. Apply. Attend. Thrive!

*Based on 2011-12 published numbers

Things that correlate to A-F Grades

I don’t know how much my readers have studied statistics, but we live in a data-driven culture where people (at least pretend to) make decisions based on numbers. Last year, if you’ll recall, I took the district grades and compared them to district poverty rates, using free and reduced lunch percentages as a proxy, finding a -.44 correlation. That would be considered a strong, negative relationship, meaning that as poverty increases, there is a strong likelihood the grade decreases.

This year, I looked at site grades and found an even stronger correlation (-.60).

I should mention a few things about this data. School data is more specific than district data. A school district with 20 schools is going to give averages that mask the highs and lows of individual sites within it. Another is that on so many levels, this year’s school report cards just don’t compare with last year’s. The formula last year was actually crazier, using a 4.0 scale rather than a 0-100 scale, and giving 0 points for categories receiving a grade of F rather than a value somewhere between 0-59.

Most importantly, I should remind readers of a key statistical principal: Correlation does not equal causation. In other words, two variables that are strongly correlated do not necessarily have a cause and effect relationship between them. Poverty is complex, and understanding how it contributes to the trend line requires further information.

Looking at other variables within school sites, I was able to calculate more correlations to schools’ report card grades.

Percentage of School Population from Minority Groups (-.45)

This is a strong, negative correlation, meaning that schools with high numbers of minority students are likely to have lower grades. Again, think of the cautionary note above. These schools do not have low grades because they serve minorities. A better explanation is the fact that so much of the state’s minority population is poor. I ran another test of the more than 1700 sites with usable data and found the correlation between poverty and minority percentages to be .62. We have a poverty problem in Oklahoma, and it impacts minority students disproportionately.

Mobility (-.32)

This is a moderate, negative correlation, meaning that schools with a lot of students moving in and out during the school year tend to have lower grades too. Again, this is a bigger factor in schools with a lot of poverty, but it’s actually a tricky statistic. Students whose tests are labeled Not Full Academic Year (NFAY), do not count in a school’s accountability reports. Maybe this correlation is a residual effect of student poverty, then. Perhaps it also has something to do with the disruptive effect of student movement during the school year. When a child enters a classroom, there is a time period for him/her to get used to the new environment. The reciprocal is true as well. Teachers need time to get to know their new students. A permanent record doesn’t fulfill that need. Nor does a series of test scores, even when transported through the state’s student data system. High mobility rates interfere with the ability to develop relationships, and they’re entirely outside of a school’s control.

Absentee Rate (-.18)

Statistically, this is a negligible relationship. (The accepted convention for weak is +/- .20 to .29.) If we are to accept that this relationship exists, we would say that it is very small, but negative. Absenteeism tends to hurt test scores. Again, there tends to be more of it in schools serving greater numbers of students in poverty. Even back in the API days, attendance was a factor in school and district scores. While schools cannot promote rules and practices to deal with student mobility, they can for attendance. I’m also open to the idea that this relationship is polluted by the bonus points most schools received (all or nothing). That can definitely skew things.

Special Education Percentage (-.13)

This is another one I have to think about a little bit. The relationship is negligible, but if it is there, it is negative. More special education students may mean a lower grade. It makes sense, conceptually. Students on an IEP take more individualized teacher attention. It’s bound to have an impact. I just thought it would be a bigger one.

ACT Score (.53) and College-going Rate (.35)

These values are for high schools only, showing that schools with higher average ACT composite scores have a high likelihood of having higher report card grades (and the same thing, to a lesser extent, to schools with a high college-going rate). This year, high schools had much higher grades than middle and elementary schools. We know that preparing children for college takes more than the last four years. The other eight matter too. Yet the feeder schools for some of the top-scoring high schools have much lower grades. It doesn’t make sense.

There are solutions to all of this. First comes with the acknowledgement that student achievement is impacted by socio-economic factors. Schools need support with the variables impacting student performance. We don’t need the state superintendent continuing with her new campaign strategy (and a poor one at that) of ranting about lost generations. That insults everybody who has ever worked in a school. It insults students and parents from past generations. It does even less to help children than these arbitrary report cards that tell us nothing we don’t already know.

Mystery Solved: Measured Progress Wins!

At Wednesday’s special meeting of the State Board of Education, the SBE selected “Company C” as Oklahoma’s new testing company for grades 3-8. One board member complained that she would’ve liked more information about the bids than the price sheet they had been given. In spite of this, members voted unanimously in favor of the SDE’s recommendation. (It’s beyond me why they didn’t go into executive session to discuss the proposals in more detail. That at least would have shown due diligence, rather than voting to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars based on what amounts to a cover sheet.)

As Andrea Eger reported this morning in the Tulsa World, the identity of the company winning the $34.45 million testing contract is no longer a mystery:

On Friday, Education Department spokeswoman Tricia Pemberton confirmed that Measured Progress had been awarded the contract.

The term is for five years, but annual renewals for each of the last four years will be required.

Other bidders were CTB/McGraw-Hill LLC, $33.94 million; Data Recognition Corporation, $51.09 million; and NCS Pearson Inc., $61.70 million.

I’ve never heard of this company, but Oklahoma has previously had contracts with the other three. Two of the proposals were close together in price. The other two were way out of range. Given the problems we had with CTB in 2013, it’s little surprise that they were not the winner. In other words, Measured Progress has no history of disappointing us. Hopefully, that’s not their only virtue.

And Pearson, you’re awfully proud of yourself there, aren’t you?

On the other hand, as Rob Miller pointed out, we have no idea what this means for field testing item tryouts this spring. Will CTB/McGraw-Hill play nicely with the new vendor and allow them to insert Common Core questions into their tests? Or will this require separate test dates? That’ll go over well. Our testing coordinators, teachers, parents, and most importantly, students, are overly fatigued with testing.

I have a long-standing interest in the inner workings of non-profit organizations. Maybe interest isn’t the best word. Maybe I should say curiosity. In the education world, there are a number of non-profits getting a ton of money for the alleged benefit of our students. College Board is a non-profit. So is ACT. There’s nothing inherently bad about that. If a group wants to make enough money to stay operational and pay staff without flipping the switch and having to pay taxes, that’s completely legal.

Of course my curiosity led to research. I went to the Measured Progress website for information, of course. Here’s how they describe themselves:

When Rich Hill and Stuart Kahl founded Measured Progress (then Advanced Systems) in 1983, they could not have predicted that their “boutique” assessment firm would one day assess more than 2.5 million students nationwide.

Measured Progress is an industry leader in the development of customized, K-12 student assessments for schools, districts, and states.

With more than 400 employees and offices in four states, the not-for-profit company remains true to its founders’ philosophy: assessments are a means, not an end. It still is all about student learning.

When I want financial information about non-profits, I go to Guide Star. Anyone can register with the site for free and look up the most recent available 990 Tax Form for any non-profit. I have a few observations based on their 2011 form.

Reporting Category	2011 Amount
Revenue	$103,736,850
Salaries	$47,260,982
Other Expenses	$62,315,459
Loss for 2011	$5,839,591
Beginning of Year Assets on Hand	$30,331,660
End of Year Assets on Hand	$24,492,069

Let me give the new kids some friendly advice: since you have some cash on hand, buy some servers. Buy a lot of them. Invest in your infrastructure. If you want this to go well, don’t screw up on test day.

Unlike Superintendent Barresi, I don’t mind them having so much cash on hand. They’re obviously growing their brand, and you have to have a reservoir of cash in order to do so. I also don’t have a huge problem with the company leader making in excess of $300,000 per year. Again, leaders of large organizations have complicated levels of responsibilities.

Executive	Position	Total Compensation
Martin Borg	President	$318,247
Stuart Kahl	Chief Executive Officer	$329,400
Richard Swartz	Senior Vice-President	$265,161
Lisa Erlich	Chief Operating Officer	$223,514
Thomas Squeo	Chief Information Officer	$229,713
Richard Dobbs	Senior Vice-President	$224,590
Michael Russell	Senior Vice-President	$271,084
Robert Mohundro	Senior Technical Strategist	$227,717
Thomas Hoffman	Senior Development Leader	$245,326
Jason Sutch	Vice President	$216,689

I’m not sure I feel great about their top ten employees all making more than $200,000 per year. Barresi is complaining that in Oklahoma, the average superintendent makes three times what the average teacher makes. I know no school district – even those with similar levels of revenue – have ten employees making this much money. None would even have two. But again, Measured Progress is a non-profit. They’re not a public entity, even if that’s where they make their money.

And they are definitely making money. As this five-year trend shows, company revenue is rising steeply.

2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
$89,547,411	$87,536,526	$97,486,239	$96,057,149	$104,057,149

Finally, I wanted to see what I could find out about Measured Progress on the web. I didn’t find much. They utilize a lot of temporary labor, but that makes sense. Much of their work is seasonal in nature. I can’t really find any testimonials, but I can’t find evidence of multi-state system failures either.

All that said, welcome to Oklahoma, Measured Progress. Let’s hope it goes well.

I, too will be damned!

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the unions or anyone else in the education establishment lose another generation of Oklahoma’s children.”

-Janet Barresi, November 8, 2013

In response to the OEA’s internet poll in which participants gave Janet Barresi an F as state superintendent, she once again lashed out at the people who actually work with kids every day. I don’t know if you can listen to that quote and somehow not be offended. It’s hard for me.

Barresi gets an F from state education association http://t.co/0cZryxChBX via @tulsaworld

— OK Education Assoc. (@okea) November 8, 2013

I don’t spend a lot of time on this blog talking about unions, and for good reason. This blog is about education policy. I focus on the rules and decisions people make and how those impact the profession. Sometimes that dovetails with what the unions do, but not always.

Nobody enters the profession thinking they want to join something. Teachers want to work with children. Or they love their content areas. They join their union (or association, depending on how they’ve organized themselves) for a variety of reasons. Or they don’t. I’m not sure what percentage of teachers belongs to OEA, AFT, POE, or any other teacher group. Whatever it is, they are some of the most dedicated people working in the schools.

That’s also not to say that that the teachers who don’t belong to their union are less dedicated. A lot of what can predict union membership is the culture of the school. In some places, it’s not a priority. But nowhere is it required.

The other members of the education establishment to whom she refers are administrators. Again, I don’t know the percentages, but many join their principal organizations or CCOSA, the umbrella group that serves all of them, providing support and advocacy. They began their careers in the classroom – as teachers.

What offends me though, more than the rampant misidentification and straw man fallacy, is the statement after the profanity. Which of the 2,000 regular readers (or the readers who receive this as a forward in your email) think you’ve contributed to the loss of a generation of Oklahoma’s children? If I were completely honest, the language she used in that statement would be mild compared to what I really want to say.

Instead, here are my nice words.

When the SDE needed help rolling out reforms such as TLE and the Common Core, they enlisted the help of veteran educators – some through the OEA, and some through CCOSA. Think whatever you want about teacher unions, but when the SDE needed someone to do the heavy lifting, they called the OEA.And those $2,000 raises Barresi has been clamoring for at campaign whistlestops? Those would go to the teachers who have … what was the phrase again … oh yeah, lost generations of children. 

I’ve spent every day of my career trying to help children. Some come to me with every advantage in the world. I try to help them. Some come broken by life. Their parents, the foster care system, something somewhere has let them down. I try to help them too. They all deserve nothing but the best, and on any given day, I may be the only one with an opportunity to tell them that. It takes working with children every day to know that.

And I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to let some half-wit politician make me feel differently.

Just Plain Nonsense

Now they’re just making stuff up. Literally. The SDE doesn’t have a rule for calculating A-F grades for all possible ways a district can organize a school, so they’re making it up as they go. Check out the Guthrie Public Schools home page. It starts with a press release from the district:

This release of grades for GPS also comes with a letter of explanation for the grades at Cotteral, Central and Fogarty from Dr. Janet Barresi, State Superintendent. In the letter, she notes the unique grade-center configuration does not fit into the legislation as written. The letter is the product of several meetings with GPS administrators and department of Education staff. Barresi and GPS Superintendent Dr. Mike Simpson had a face-to-face meeting two weeks ago to discuss different options for GPS. Those issues were again revisited last week as Barresi met with GPS students and staff. Unfortunately, no options were deemed legally acceptable for this school year. As an alternative, Barresi offered the letter of explanation.

According to Simpson, “There has been a lot said about this process and the labels that come with it. I was vocal last year about the irrelevance of the grades for Cotteral, Central and Fogarty Elementary schools. I communicated to the senate authors of the bill during the last legislative session but obviously it fell on deaf ears. Now we are continuing to work with any person or entity that can help. Senator A. J. Griffin has been a vocal supporter of our district and an advocate of exploring alternative grading options for Guthrie Public Schools legislatively.” 

Simpson went on to say, “I don’t want the irrelevance of grades for three of our sites to overshadow my concerns with the grades of our other sites. Much of the reforms we continue to put in place locally will not surface in these grades this soon. We will continue to evaluate the results along with the additional measures we have in place. Included in that data are student ACT scores along with our newest tool, MAP testing. MAP is an acronym for Measuring Academic Performance which is a highly respected measure of student growth. MAP results will allow our teachers to better monitor our student progress throughout the school year. It gives us a greater diagnostic of our student mastery of the new Oklahoma Academic Standards. The support given by the LEAD initiative and our relationship with the University of Virginia shows our recognition of these issues as well as the need to at instruction differently.

Then a letter to GPS parents from the SDE:

As you have no doubt noted, the “grade” received by your school is lower than you had expected. I am writing you to explain how this grade was derived.

The A-F Grade Card is largely derived by students’ performance on assessments and on their academic growth over time. In Oklahoma, students are not assessed until third grade. Because your school district has a unique alignment of grade-band centers that do not include a third and fourth grade, we must derive a different method for reporting performance of these particular sites.

In other words, the grade was awarded based on the results of student test scores for a site not connected to your child’s school. There is also no opportunity for the site to be graded based on growth of students academically through the school year.

I agree that this does not make sense. It does not reflect the direct instructional impact of teachers on your child’s performance. With last year’s report card, we had other factors at our disposal to yield a grade, but those data points were restricted by changes in grade-card legislation earlier this year. State and federal law requires me to report this to you in this fashion.

The letter was signed by Janet Barresi.

Why is the State Department of Education assigning grades that they admit make no sense? What I do like about this exchange – other than the fact that Barresi herself discredits the assigning of grades arbitrarily – is the fact that Guthrie has a plan for communicating legitimate information to parents.

Today’s New Mistake; Today’s New Mystery

All suspense gone, the State Board of Education approved this year’s A-F Report Cards for schools. There was a fair amount of bluster, including Barresi complaining about people complaining. In the end, the air silently left the balloon, and interested parties logged onto the SDE website to review their grades.

A	354
B	499
C	472
D	263
F	163
N/A	34

The grade distribution is something resembling a bell curve. When I have some time this weekend, I’ll look more closely at how those grades correspond to schools by different variables, especially poverty. Barresi herself commented that there are more schools receiving a grade of A than last year, as well as more receiving a D or F. Since the SDE didn’t create the formula this year, they seem pretty ambivalent about the results – as long as they’re accepted and communicated.

Along with the live roll-out of school grades, the A-F page also released district grades. Nobody was ready for that, including the SDE. Shortly after the grades were released, district grades were changed to “N/A,” and Tricia Pemberton released this statement:

“The district grades were not ready to be released today, that was completely my error. I thought we were releasing the district and site grades, and we were just releasing site grades today. The district grades will be ready to be released hopefully within a few days. Please ignore the district grade that you saw first, and that will be reposted within a few days.”

That said, you can still go to the A-F Page and download grades for all sites and all districts. (This would be similar to covering your eyes and telling someone, YOU CAN’T SEE ME!) Here’s the letter grade breakdown for districts, which I suppose is now unofficial:

A	30
B	123
C	201
D	140
F	47
N/A	2

Districts didn’t fare as well as sites, for one main reason: bonus points. The district bonus points were calculated according to the high school scale, which was far less generous. Therefore, district grades in some cases are nearly a full letter grade lower than the average grade of the schools. Given that schools have different levels of enrollment, it’s no surprise that there is a difference. The surprise is that it is this significant.

***

The other item of note is that the SBE approved a testing vendor for $35 million. They didn’t include any information in the board packet about the testing vendor – just this one paragraph recommendation:

State Board approval is being requested for OMES to award bid for the Oklahoma College and Career Readiness Assessment (OCCRA). This will include grades 3-8 Math and English Language Arts. This test will be operational 2014-2015.

We know a vendor has been recommended. We know this will cost a lot of money. We just don’t know any other thing.

So much for transparency.

In the Nick of Time

With just under 48 hours to go, the SDE announced late yesterday afternoon that the A-F Report Cards are finally ready:

****SDE******Report Card Update OK State Dept of Ed sent this bulletin at 11/04/2013 02:29 PM CST Dear Superintendents, Principals, and District Test Coordinators, The corrections to the A to F Report Cards are complete. You may see the grades for the sites in your district via the single sign-on page of the State Department of Education website. The hard work of districts and the state enabled the most accurate data to be used to calculate the A to F grades. Thank you for your persistence to achieve this goal.

Yes, this time, schools get some of the credit. After all, when the aforementioned superintendents, principals, and DTCs login to the secure site, they see a running list that includes most of the changes they had to endure over the last few weeks:

10/26/2013 – Friday nights grade recalculation did not apply the state average increase for growth points. This has been corrected. 10/25/2013 – Corrections applied from data verification requests- Winter EOI Biology, History test data were added to the system and STNs cleaned. Second Time Tests not marked as Second Time Test were corrected for EOI testing records. Second Time Tests removed from 3% OAAP, OMAAP cap. All 8th grade EOI tests count for current 9th grade site. 10/22/2013 – Corrections applied from data verification requests- Added Advanced Coursework Bonus Point to all Middle Schools and High Schools Corrected rounding issues Missing STNs added to OAAP, Winter EOI, Summer EOI Tests (Could affect participation percentage) Corrected middle schools whose data was pulling high school tests into calculations Corrected College Entrance Exam data for multiple schools 10/17/2013 – The issue with the application of the 1% and 2% caps on OAAP and OMAAP tests has been corrected. 10/17/2013 – Issues with the Bottom 25% Growth have been corrected. These corrections caused changes in the site grades.  Please use the subject links from the Report Card Detail Screen to view and verify the students included. 10/16/2013 – Report card details and grades now available to district administrators 10/15/2013 – Final scored files received from CTB

I’m not sure this was a complete list, but in any case, schools can see something resembling final grades now before their release tomorrow. Until the SDE’s site goes live, I’d hold off on any press releases.

(By the way, many schools saw small changes yesterday too.)

And there was much rejoicing!

About the Governor’s Letter

Governor Fallin has called upon all parties to end the drama, assuring us that “the time for theatrics is over” when it comes to this week’s roll-out of Oklahoma’s A-F Report Cards. In a letter published yesterday by the Tulsa World, she completely misses the point of much of the dialogue that has taken place around the education accountability system.

The main points of her letter are:

1. A-F Report Cards are easily understood.
2. The grades leave little doubt about the relative standing of an A or an F school.
3. Accountability is not about assigning blame.
4. A-F Report Cards are used in other states.
5. Opposition to the accountability system is partisan.
6. Releasing the grades is the beginning of the school improvement process.

Responding to each:

1. There’s a difference between something that is easy to understand and something that doesn’t require much thought. Narrowing everything a school (or district) does into a letter grade is misleading. Some schools have a relatively easy time getting an A because they are located within highly affluent neighborhoods. That doesn’t mean their teachers don’t work hard. It just means the outcomes on state tests don’t leave as much to chance as those in other schools. Compound that with the fact that schools get bonus points (for elementary schools, it’s 10 or nothing – all based on attendance), and grades can flip pretty easily. Conversely, nothing about serving a high-poverty population means that a school can’t have good test scores. Getting there is just much harder, and staying there is even less likely.
2. First of all, the premise is patently false. The OU/OSU study found that the raw score differences between students in A and F schools were negligible. Secondly, even if true, this would leave those concerned wondering what to make of the B, C, and D schools. Is a B school with an 85 but no bonus points actually less successful than an A school with a 90, but with 10 bonus points for attendance? I’d argue that the B school’s accomplishment might be more impressive, having had higher student achievement with more absenteeism. Schools in the middle – especially the B schools – will likely stay off the SDE’s radar, which is probably the safest place to be.
3. Every bit of this process is about assigning blame and furthering an agenda that benefits corporate reformers more than it does public school students. Remember that time in 2012 when Barresi accidentally emailed the wrong person, defiantly proclaiming, “I will no longer take the heat for districts failing to do their job!” That was over the first group of students who had to pass graduation tests in the state. This will also be the undercurrent in her reaction to this week’s D and F schools, next spring’s 3^rd grade retentions, and – if she stays in office that long – the reckoning that will come with the state’s first Common Core tests in 2015. I am not naïve enough to believe for a second that Governor Fallin is that naïve.
4. The use of A-F Report Cards in other states has been a debacle. They can’t get them right in Florida. They can’t get them right in Indiana. These states have been our models, but the grading of schools, even if well-intended, has consequences that surprise reformers. Sometimes, the grades aren’t very flattering for their pet project schools.
5. Superintendent Barresi likes to pretend that she is a pure conservative, yet she has serious opposition within her own party – and not just at the ballot box. Poorly-conceived education reform measures tend to upset people on both sides of the aisle. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and the whirly-gig of social media in general, I get a diverse menu of opinions. Among them are a 3^rd grade teacher, a retired 40+ year veteran of many classrooms, an assistant superintendent, superintendents from Sapulpa and Sand Springs, parents groups, newspapers from Ada and Clinton, the organization representing most school administrators, and even a former Republican candidate for state superintendent. These are not particularly cries from the bluest map dots in the nation’s reddest state. Governor Fallin has to understand that this uprising is a reaction to something of questionable merit being executed very poorly.
6. This is not “where the real work starts.” The real work started months ago, as students were finishing the previous school year and teachers were busy communicating the needs of each child to the teachers who would have them next year. It continued during the summer with site and district level analysis of preliminary test scores. Teachers and principals gave up time for professional development to understand reforms and learn more about ways to make instruction more engaging. Then when students came back in August, it continued with effective and accurate communication with parents. Over the course of the first quarter of the school year, school improvement has been an ongoing process centered around understanding the needs of students, both on the whole, and individually. Nobody was waiting for the report cards to have a starting point. Only someone who has never worked in public education would think that.

Having a system that lacks meaning – not the various responses to it – is what threatens to undermine efforts at increasing accountability in Oklahoma. Ignoring research by people who do that for a living just makes it worse. It also brings national attention, as you can see here, here, and here. Come Wednesday, the predictable proclamations and responses will add to the misplaced focus.

Speaking of Cheap Political Theater

We seem to have irritated the governor. All of the criticism of the state’s A-F Report Card system does not please her. Apparently when she’s not making appearances on Fox News or raising boatloads of cash, she actually pays attention to some of the things that happen here. Well, her spokesperson does. From tomorrow’s Tulsa World:

“It’s not helpful to anyone’s cause. It seems to be some opponents are absolutely bent on undermining the credibility of the entire system,” said Fallin spokesman Alex Weintz. “The fact of the matter is this grading system, regardless of whether or not you believe it should have been put together differently, is the law.”

The link is a preview of tomorrow’s article which also teases the idea that continued criticism of the law and the results could jeopardize additional funding for schools. Let me see if I understand. The governor doesn’t care much for research. She disagrees with the OU/OSU researchers’ findings. She doesn’t want people to voice displeasure with laws (except for the laws she doesn’t like). And people having opinions could cost schools money.

In other words, shut up, or I’ll punish the kids. Well, she won’t, but her people will.