LANSING, Mich. — Sen. Ruth Johnson on Tuesday introduced legislation to reinstate the state’s A-F accountability and ranking system for public schools and to help strengthen annual teacher evaluations.
“Restoring the easy-to-understand A-F accountability system would enable parents to easily see how their child’s school is performing so they can make informed choices about what school is best for their child’s education,” said Johnson, R-Holly. “Ensuring we have effective teachers and giving parents access to information about their local schools are both critical steps to help our students learn and improve educational outcomes.”
Senate Bill 378, sponsored by Johnson, would reinstate the A-F grading scale for individual schools so parents have a straightforward tool to evaluate how their children’s schools are performing.
The restored system would assign an A through F letter grade to several areas of school performance, including proficiency in reading and math, student growth, graduation rates, and a school’s performance in comparison with its peers.
SBs 379 and 380, sponsored by Sen. John Damoose and Johnson, would restore annual evaluations of teachers, require student progress be part of every teacher’s evaluation process, and allow evaluation results to be considered when promoting or removing teachers.
According to the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, Michigan has fallen to 44th among the 50 states for fourth grade reading scores, down 12 places from 32nd in 2019.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress report determined that 75% of Michigan’s fourth graders and 76% of eighth graders are not proficient in reading at grade level. It also showed that 63% of fourth graders and 76% of eighth graders are not proficient in math.
Michigan is also in the bottom 10 states nationally for COVID learning loss according to MLive.
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