Why California keeps failing to grade its schools

In the 2013-14 school year, the state suspended the Academic Performance Index, or API, the chief tool Californians had for seeing how their kids’ schools stacked up among schools across the state.

API wasn’t a perfect measure, but it offered clear school rankings that could be understood by anyone in your neighborhood — from parents to real estate agents.

To be fair, state education officials had many reasons for creating a new system:

The federal government was ditching its No Child Left Behind regime, and California schools were adopting the Common Core and a new local funding formula that gives parents and communities the bureaucratic burden of creating Local Control and Accountability Plans for their schools.

Is the real goal of state leaders less accountability for themselves and for California’s public schools?

State officials have eliminated half of the standardized tests students are taking; they also have suspended the High School Exit Exam through 2018.

The union’s “statewide ignorance is bliss” logic matches that of Gov. Jerry Brown, who recently told CALmatters that Californians shouldn’t expect the state’s work to close the achievement gap between black and Latino students and other students.

The same decade saw declines in the dropout rate, more students taking challenging courses (especially math and science), and increases in the school performance of English-language learners and kids from low-income families.

To pressure state leaders, children’s advocacy groups are pushing legislation outlining a coherent and comprehensive index that parents and communities can understand.

If state officials want to show they’re serious about building a useful accountability system, they should take on a make-up assignment: