In the struggle to improve public education, many agree on the goals. The means to reach them, that’s where you pick fights. Over the decades of wrangling, there has been a fundamental effort to find out which schools do well, which don’t, and to broadcast the results to a waiting public. The goal is “accountability,” motivation and public engagement, all good things that can lead us to higher ground.

How to decide who is good and who is not is not so easy, however. We’ve developed an obsession with testing and ranking and rating and argued over which tests are good and when. It started 20 years ago with the very ponderous Washington Assessment of Student Learning, since dropped for tests simpler and more numerous. Those tests and other measures result in school ratings in a two-year-old Washington Achievement Index, which was started in the effort to gain a waiver from the impossible standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Now the vogue is to take those rankings, add in some new factors, and produce a letter grade for every school in the state, just as the schools grade their students, from A to F. A bill to do that, sponsored by Sen. Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island, is under consideration, and Gov. Jay Inslee has expressed support for the concept.

It is reasonable to ask, what good would that do? We already have rankings. Why add a new ranking to the rankings? Simplification, perhaps; communication with parents, motivation for educators.

I called Eastmont Superintendent Garn Christensen and asked if he saw any value in letter grades for schools, and I sensed he was stifling a sigh. “I think it’s problematic,” he said. Testing fatigue sets in. He said he once counted that the district administers 20 required tests. The school system gives its students “a 13-year service,” he said, but every five or 10 years we change the way we test and measure their abilities. He supports testing, of course. They are valuable strategic tools. All good teachers need to measure their students’ strengths and weaknesses. “Testing is important but it’s not what school is all about,” Christensen said. The goal is to produce students who graduate with the skills necessary to advance and fulfill their dreams, which is not easy stuff to measure.

The grading system could be used by parents, concerned with the quality of their child’s education, but that’s not new. It is all based on public information from public agencies, which schools are. You can repackage that information as a letter grade if you wish.

Parents already often have the ability to choose their child’s school within a district, based on a school’s rankings and results, said Christensen. He realizes some students, teachers and schools are not good fits. Families are not locked into a school they consider a failure. But if a parent asks to move their child because of a school’s test results, Christensen said he will ask them to visit their neighborhood school, see the students and talk to the teachers and administrators, and get a feel for what really happens. A fine education can be had in unexpected places.

Well, what’s our grade? The Washington Policy Center took the concept and applied letter grades to schools based on the Achievement Index. It calculates rankings by reading, writing, math and science scores, results with low-income students, yearly progress and a comparison to similar schools. The index rates schools from “struggling” to “exemplary.” The exemplary were given an A. Schools in our region with an A are, in order from the top, Icicle River Middle School, Rock Island Elementary, Grant Elementary in Ephrata, Osborn Elementary in Leavenworth, Cascade High School, Pateros High School, Chelan High School, Ephrata Middle School, Stehekin School and Foothills Middle School in Wenatchee. My apologies if I missed anyone. To see how your school ranked, go here: www.washingtonpolicy.org/school-achievement.

Tracy Warner’s column appears Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at warner@wenatcheeworld.com or 665-1163.