BEDFORD, Michigan — Since 2018, Michigan has used a grading system where public schools in the state are graded on an A-F scale in different categories. But, last year, the Michigan legislature voted to get rid of the system.
Principal Kevin Weber has been at Bedford High School for five years.
"I think one of the challenges with the letter grade system is that people believe that when they see A,B,C,D, F, they think they know what that means," Weber said. "But how that is composed (and) the criteria that went into it is very different."
While Bedford High School gets good grades in most categories, he's seen what bad letter grades can do for the community and teachers.
"Imagine if a school or community is doing some really good work, doing some really good things, and then this letter grade comes out and it's negative and it's not actually accurate," Weber said. "That doesn't help teachers when we have a teacher shortage."
Here's how five high schools in Michigan did on the recent report card-style grades.
Adrian, Bedford, Dundee, Tecumseh and Whiteford all got an A for their graduation rates.
In the rate of students reaching proficiency on state math and ELA assessments, Bedford, Dundee, Tecumseh and Whiteford all received B's while Adrian and Monroe got C's.
But in the Performance Among Peers category, all the schools got a C or below while Bedford and Monroe received F's. This category compares a school's performance with others that have similarities in categories like student enrollment, number of students with disabilities and students receiving free lunches.
But Weber thinks there's more to the story than the Performance Among Peers grades say.
"Just because two schools both have 80% of their students with free or reduced lunch, they might have really different communities still," he said.
He said the new system that starts next year without letter grades will help parents and the community get a better understanding of how a school and its students are performing.
"It won't be as simple as looking at a letter grade and then making assumptions based on what those letter grades mean," Weber said. "You'd have to understand what these numbers are related to. It's all transparent so you would get a much more holistic story to it."
Michigan has an online Parent Dashboard with data on each public school in the state.