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Article

Making the Grade: Parent Perceptions of A–F School Report Card Grade Accountability Regimes in the United States

by
Ian Kingsbury
1,
David T. Marshall
2,* and
Candace M. Doak
2
1
Educational Freedom Institute, Phoenix, AZ 85012, USA
2
Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36830, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(7), 885; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070885
Submission received: 30 April 2025 / Revised: 1 July 2025 / Accepted: 8 July 2025 / Published: 11 July 2025
(This article belongs to the Section Education and Psychology)
Versions Notes

Abstract

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires that U.S. states provide a public evaluation of the performance of each public school while providing broad discretion in how states devise performance frameworks. One common method consists of states assigning each school an A–F letter grade based on English and math proficiency rates and other measures of academic performance. Proponents of the summary letter-grade system cite its simplicity as a virtue, while detractors contend that the system is simplistic to a fault. To bring greater clarity to these ongoing debates, we solicited opinions from parents regarding state letter-grade systems. We conducted semi-structured focus groups with parents in Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas (three focus groups per state). These conversations revealed that most parents were not aware that the state grades schools. Once the performance framework was explained, most parents expressed a belief that it is overly simplistic and insufficiently deferential to what they perceive as the subjective nature of school quality. Parents also revealed substantial tension between their conception of school quality and the way it is operationalized in the report card, with the latter ascribing much greater importance to state test scores.

1. Introduction

The idea of evaluating states and schools in the United States on their educational performance traces its origins to A Nation at Risk, a 1983 government report that famously concluded that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a People” (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The report ignited urgency around the concept of school accountability. Central to those concerns and efforts was a belief that educational performance metrics across schools and states needed to be collected and published so that key stakeholders (e.g., parents, local elected officials, and superintendents) knew which schools needed to be held to account, even if disagreement lingered over the proper mechanism for doing so.
Since A Nation at Risk, American school accountability systems’ general (if nonlinear) trend has featured enhanced granularity of publicly reported performance data. Secretary of Education Terrel Bell’s “wall chart” represented the first government effort to facilitate comparison of educational performance across states. The chart displayed an accessible list of school metrics, including SAT and ACT scores, teacher characteristics, and school expenditure data (Ginsburg et al., 1988).
Energy toward replicating or scaling the process initially stalled due to concerns that the dearth of standardization in performance metrics did not readily allow for interstate comparison (Sunderman, 2022). Critics additionally worried that the metrics could induce perverse incentives that favored short-term success at the expense of long-term objectives (Stecher et al., 2004). By the mid-1990s, however, a broad bipartisan consensus recognized that the country had not made good on addressing the issues raised in A Nation at Risk (Olson & Jerald, 2020). The 1994 Clinton Administration’s reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act required each state to adopt standards of student learning and to assess student progress along those standards in at least three grades.
No Child Left Behind (Office of the Under Secretary, 2002), yet another reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, represented the zenith of the performance-based accountability movement. NCLB required states to publish school-level test score results for students in grades 3–8 (Jacob, 2017; Peterson & West, 2006). It also mandated test administration during one year in high school and required scores to be reported for major subgroups, including “major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, English language learners, and students from low-income families” (Martin et al., 2016). For the first time, parents were guaranteed insight into how their child’s school was performing compared to other schools. The summary letter-grade system (i.e., states assign schools grades ranging from A to F) emerged as a popular technique for facilitating comparison across schools. Florida Governor Jeb Bush first adopted the system in 1998 (preceding NCLB by four years), and 15 states have since adopted similar performance frameworks, though Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Utah, and Virginia later abandoned the system (Blad, 2023). Methodological approaches vary in terms of how states grade schools, as seen in Table 1 and Table 2. Broadly, idiosyncratic differences notwithstanding, academic proficiency and growth as determined by state tests play instrumental roles in determining each school’s grade (Adams et al., 2016b).
States are granted broad latitude in devising school performance rating systems, and this discretion became even greater with the 2015 authorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the successor to No Child Left Behind (Sunderman, 2022; Walsh et al., 2022). California, for example, uses a dashboard system that allows the public to explore school performance metrics while remaining officially agnostic about what those measures mean as indicators of school quality. Connecticut, Washington DC, Iowa, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Dakota use rating systems that score schools between 0 and 100 points (Dalton, 2017). The system is more prescriptive than a dashboard, but still invites some interpretation as to what those numbers denote. The school letter-grade system (i.e., A–F letter grades) is the most prescriptive. It uses a universally familiar convention to make clear judgments about whether schools are excelling (a grade of A), failing (a grade of F), or doing something in between. Its simplicity is by design. ExcelinEd, a major supporter of letter-grade systems, claims that while most states use “vague labels that are difficult to understand and require an explanation… A–F school grading systems, on the other hand, embrace transparency to recognize success and expose failure in a way everyone can understand.” (ExcelinEd, n.d.).

1.1. The Theoretical Case for Test-Based Accountability

Polikoff et al. (2014) explain that there are two non-mutually exclusive theories supporting administrative, test-based accountability systems. Principal-agent theory holds that the promise of reward or threat of sanction for performance should direct school personnel to expend greater effort or focus on test score performance. While No Child Left Behind originally envisioned consequences for the lowest-performing schools, ESSA is not prescriptive about school turnaround efforts beyond requiring that states must adopt turnaround plans for the lowest-performing schools (Black et al., 2021). A minority of states officially prescribe sanctions for the lowest-performing schools (e.g., closing schools or transferring their governance responsibilities away from elected school boards to mayors or governors). However, even those states rarely make good on the threat of sanctions (Black et al., 2021; Wall, 2023). Whether state accountability frameworks, absent the threat of sanction, nonetheless retain the potential to catalyze greater focus on student achievement is unclear.
The experiential goods literature, meanwhile, posits that transparent information about school quality helps families to make better educational choices (Polikoff et al., 2014). It also pressures schools to enhance their performance in the interest of remaining competitive in the education marketplace. The A–F letter-grade system amounts to an effort to maximally integrate market-based and administrative-based accountability by offering parents clear judgment about school quality rather than information about school quality. According to ExcelinEd, “In the A–F states across the country, stakeholders strive for excellence in a way you don’t see with fuzzy descriptors like ‘satisfactory’ or ‘performing.’ Grading schools on a scale of A–F produces a sense of urgency to ensure our schools are meeting the needs of every student.”

1.2. Evidence Supporting A–F Grading System Effectiveness

Some empirical evidence supports the theory that A–F grading systems can successfully galvanize school improvement efforts. Rouse et al. (2013) observe that elementary schools in Florida under accountability pressure “changed their instructional practices in meaningful ways, and that these responses can explain a portion of the test score gains associated with the Florida school accountability system” (p. 251). Winters (2016) observes a similar phenomenon in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg adopted a letter-grade system as part of a more comprehensive suite of school improvement efforts, and analyses indicate that students in schools that received an F grade in the final year of the system’s implementation performed better than they would have had their school received a higher grade. Specifically, student scores were 0.19 standard deviations higher than would be expected in math and 0.17 standard deviations higher in English/language arts (ELA). Notably, an evaluation by Rockoff and Turner (2008) of the letter-grade system in New York City in its first year of implementation observed achievement effects that doubled the magnitude of those observed by Winters.
The methodologies employed by Winters compared to Rockoff and Turner are essentially identical, indicating that the diminishment of the effect over time is authentic and not explained by differences in measurement. Bailey et al. (2020) document that the effects of many initially successful education interventions fade out over time. Lee and Reeves (2012) specifically observe diminishing returns to the accountability frameworks No Child Left Behind introduced. Overall, while evidence suggests that summary school rating systems can initially animate test score improvement efforts, it is unclear whether or to what extent they can do so in perpetuity.

1.3. Evidence Against A–F Grading System Effectiveness

Detractors of summary letter grades have found evidence that racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps are larger in schools that receive better grades, inviting concern about whether the incentives are sufficiently aligned with the needs of historically underserved students. Adams et al. (2016a) note that racial minority students and students in Oklahoma receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) in schools with low grades actually had higher levels of achievement than their racial minority and FRL peers in schools earning higher grades. The grading system did not properly account for within-school student achievement variance. Moreover, research generally indicates that school quality can explain only a small fraction of student performance, and that most performance is predicted by student socioeconomic characteristics (Sirin, 2005; White, 1982). Adams et al. (2016b) observe that letter grades issued in Oklahoma do not properly account for this empirical reality, and that achievement differences generally become statistically insignificant after controlling for student demographics. Finally, the National School Boards Association challenges whether differences in state test scores are truly indicative of improvements in student learning. Descriptive evidence indicates that letter grades appear to be uncorrelated with state performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (National School Boards Association, 2020).

1.4. The Politics of A–F Grading Systems

In the political arena, summary school letter grades have faced increased bipartisan scrutiny in recent years (Kasler, 2021; Long, 2019). Among Democrats, opposition generally echoes opposition from teachers’ unions that the system does not adequately capture the intricacies and nuances of school performance and that it encourages teachers to ‘teach to the test’ rather than focus on content mastery (Long, 2015). In 2023, for example, a majority Democratic legislature and Democratic Governor in Michigan put an end to the state’s 5-year-old letter-grade system. The bill’s sponsor called it a “duplicative, confusing system that … does nothing to actually improve a school’s performance. It is way too focused on standardized testing data, which has no bearing on what our schools are dealing with” (Chambers & LeBlanc, 2023).
Republican members of the House in Michigan voted overwhelmingly against scrapping the state’s A–F letter-grade system (Chambers & LeBlanc, 2023). Elsewhere, however, Republican lawmakers have publicly deliberated whether the system is intellectually compatible with a newly popular ethos among conservatives that accountability ought to be fully enforced through market mechanisms (Finn, 2024). Whereas the A–F letter-grade system entrusts state agencies to render clear judgments about school quality, the “parental empowerment” movement entrusts parents to make these judgments, demonstrated by their subsequent decisions about where to enroll their child(ren) (DeAngelis, 2024).
Most of the current century featured a pairing of test-based accountability and school choice. However, there exists tension between the A–F accountability system and market-centric systems. Betebenner et al. (2005) conducted a survey of parents participating in school choice programs in a western U.S. state and found that parents prioritized factors other than test scores when making school enrollment decisions for their children. In a report published by the American First Policy Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Trump Administration, Todd-Smith et al. (2024) argue that the letter-grade system “oversimplifies education, making it difficult to establish what is needed for each school” (p. 2). A better solution, they argue, can be found using multiple indicators for public school accountability. Kingsbury (2023), meanwhile, observes that most classical charter schools in Texas receive lower grades than the districts they operate in, despite growing demand for the former and declining enrollment in the latter. In 2023, lawmakers in Utah abandoned the letter-grade system partly because they recognized it was outdated after the state adopted a universal education savings account, since private school options available to parents in the state would not be included in the system to the same level of accountability (Tanner, 2023). As such, the role and relevance of A–F letter-grade systems in educational accountability continue to be actively debated and reassessed.
Normative and philosophical ideas about the meaning of public or democratic education in America also factor into debates about school accountability, or at least ought to. Murray and Howe (2017), for example, argue that validity concerns about the information conveyed by A–F grading systems notwithstanding, the system erodes local control and democratic accountability by outsourcing school oversight responsibilities to centralized authorities instead of elected school boards. Moreover, according to Murray and Howe, the centralized accountability system presupposes that labor market outcomes are the defining feature of school success while downplaying other potentially important goals like values formation and civic education.

1.5. Parent Use of A–F Letter Grades

Part of the argument for using an accountability system, such as a letter-grade system, is that it can provide parents with important information about the performance of the school their child attends, or about prospective schools they might consider for their children. Indeed, the Arizona State Board of Education (n.d.) explicitly states the purpose of its A–F letter-grade system: “It gives parents a yardstick to compare schools.” In practice, research conducted over the past decade paints a more nuanced picture. A survey of parents in Houston, Texas, found that 58% of parents viewed the A–F system favorably, with almost half of the respondents sharing that they would only consider schools with an A or B for their children (Good Reason Houston, 2023). However, a November 2023 nationally representative survey of 1500 parents found that only 23% of parents consulted state report cards when looking for information about their child’s school (McShane, 2024). In-person visits to the school, school ratings websites, friends, neighbors, parents of other children enrolled in the school, family, and social media were all cited as sources of information that parents looked to more often than state accountability reports. Similarly, a study that considered school board elections in the context of A–F accountability regimes observed no evidence that voters act on the outcomes or that board staffing decisions are responsive to state letter grades, casting further doubt on the extent to which the grades can serve as a catalyst for school improvement efforts (Kogan et al., 2016). The current study sought to understand how American parents make sense of, use, and value information, including state-issued school report grades, when making decisions about their child(ren)’s schooling.

2. Materials and Methods

This research was guided by the following questions:
  • What sources of information do parents use to appraise school quality?
  • To what extent are parents aware of their state’s accountability system and how it works?
  • What aspects of schooling matter most to parents when appraising school quality?
  • To what extent do parent-assigned letter-grade ratings of their child’s school align with state-issued letter-grade ratings?
To answer these questions, we conducted focus groups with parents in three U.S. states that currently employ a letter-grade accountability system—Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas (three focus groups per state)1. We partnered with Roscow Market Research to identify participants and conducted a total of nine focus groups between 5 September and 3 October 2023. Individuals had to be current parents of children enrolled in public schools in order to be eligible to participate in the study. Participants completed an informed consent form prior to the start of each focus group and were each given an incentive of USD 150 for their participation2. Each focus group was conducted via Zoom, followed a semi-structured protocol, lasted between 60 and 75 min in length, and was recorded and transcribed. The semi-structured protocol included questions that asked participants about their views on the purpose of education; the types of information they sought out when making decisions about which school(s) to enroll their child(ren); the letter grade they would assign to their child’s school3; the extent to which they were aware of their state’s letter-grade accountability system; and what metrics they would ideally include in such an accountability system.

2.1. Participants

A total of 44 individuals participated in our focus groups, including 14 from Arizona, 16 from North Carolina, and 14 from Texas4. Thirty-seven participants completed our voluntary demographic survey. These participants had an average of 1.81 (SD = 0.88) children currently enrolled in school. Half of the participants were male; half were female. A slight plurality of participants was White (36.11%), and a majority enrolled their children in suburban schools (70.27%). See Table 3 for the demographics of the participants who completed the survey.

2.2. Data Analysis

The first three research questions were answered through qualitative analysis of the focus group transcripts. The nine focus groups yielded 209 pages of transcripts. They were coded using ATLAS.ti version 23. A hybrid coding approach was employed (Saldaña, 2015). Upon the completion of the nine focus groups, the first two authors met to discuss notes they had taken throughout the focus groups and drafted a memo; an initial codebook was created based on this memo. The second and third authors coded the transcripts. Additional codes were created based on the transcripts. Two transcripts were jointly coded by the second and third authors. This process helped refine code definitions and develop a shared understanding of code meanings and their application. The research team met twice to identify emerging themes and arrive at key findings (Maxwell, 2013). See Appendix A for a partial code book with definitions and example quotes. The fourth research question sought to understand the extent to which parents’ letter-grade ratings of their child’s school were in line with the state-issued letter grades of the school. Descriptive statistics, including frequencies and percentages, were calculated using Microsoft Excel.

3. Results

Focus group data from parents in states that use A–F grading systems revealed important insights. Parents shared (1) the sources of information they use to appraise school quality, (2) the aspects of schooling that matter most to them when appraising school quality, and (3) the extent to which they are aware of their state’s accountability system. We then explored the extent to which parents’ priorities align with the inputs included in their state’s letter-grade accountability system, as well as the extent to which the grades they would give their child’s school align with the grades issued by the state.

3.1. What Sources of Information Do Parents Use to Appraise School Quality?

Participants shared that they looked to a range of sources of information when attempting to appraise school quality. Several suggested that they looked at real estate websites, including Zillow or www.realtor.com, for school ratings. Others relied on www.greatschools.org, which rates schools on a 10-point scale against others in a given geographic location, not uniformly across the United States. Several others shared that they were interested in reviews that others posted about the school online, including those in social media networks. A parent from North Carolina shared, “I would definitely join community Facebook groups and ask other parents.” Participants who had recently moved to the state or metropolitan area they were in shared that they relied on their new co-workers for guidance on the local schools. Others shared that they began by finding information online or through referrals, but ultimately elected to visit schools before making a decision on where to enroll their child(ren). One parent in Arizona shared, “There [were] three or four schools in my areas … based on the [online] ratings. [I] got to go to a couple of the schools … talk to them and get more information.” Another parent from Texas shared, “… we walked around the schools, met the staff … just to get a feel of how the school was, and that’s how we choose our school.” Several parents described a process that began with online resources or reviews of schools to identify school(s) to personally visit. Only two participants shared that they sought information from the state’s education department website as part of their decision-making process.

3.2. To What Extent Are Parents Aware of Their State’s Accountability System?

When we asked parents if they were aware of the existence of their state’s A–F grading system, some were aware of it, while others were not. Those who were aware of their existence had little understanding of what inputs were behind the grades the state issued. However, the simplicity of the system worked; parents understood that a higher grade meant that the school was higher performing. As one parent from Arizona shared, “I knew [the A–F grading system] existed. … I just didn’t know what’s included [and] what [the state was] looking at entirely. But I know it’s out there and I know getting a higher score is a really good thing … but that’s all I knew about it.” A Hispanic parent from Arizona who was not aware of the letter-grade system’s existence prior to our focus group shared that she wished she had known about the system and that there was standard messaging regarding what the grade meant. He shared, “Who’s A rating is it? Is it the Arizona Department of Education? I feel like the messaging, there should be some standard messaging such that once you see [the letter grade], you know exactly what it means. And even if you don’t know, you know exactly where to go to find out what that means.” Only one parent in our focus groups shared that they understood that the grades were primarily reflective of standardized test scores; however, she did not understand that it was a product of both proficiency and growth measures. Less than a quarter of participants from all three states were unaware of how to find their child’s school’s letter grade. At the conclusion of each focus group, we shared relevant URLs via Zoom’s chat feature and took the time to show participants how to look up information about their child’s school, including their state report card letter grade.

3.3. What Aspects of Schooling Do Parents Prioritize?

In each focus group we conducted, we asked participants to collectively create a list of inputs that might go into an accountability system if they were to create one. The list was compiled using Zoom’s chat feature. Participants were then each asked to identify the three to four items that were their top priorities5. Across all nine focus groups, a plurality of participants identified academic metrics, including standardized test scores (n = 16) and graduation rates (n = 16), as inputs they would include in an accountability system. Parents were also interested in the extent to which their children were being prepared for college (n = 12) and the student-to-teacher ratios (n = 12), as well as items that were less easily quantifiable, such as the frequency and quality of communication they had with their child’s teachers (n = 8). See Table 4 for the frequency with which participants identified various inputs they desired to be included in school accountability systems.
We also explored the extent to which parents identified similar inputs across focus groups. Focus groups are a useful way to collect qualitative data. Mertler (2019) notes that “people are often more comfortable talking in a small group opposed to a one-on-one interview” and that “interactions among the focus group participants may be extremely informative due to people’s tendency to feed off others’ comments” (p. 175). However, a pitfall of focus groups can be the possibility of groupthink developing (MacDougall & Baum, 1997). As such, we also explored how often each of the inputs was discussed by the focus group. Student-to-teacher ratio (or a similar response, such as ‘class sizes’) was identified in two-thirds of the focus groups we conducted (n = 6). Five additional inputs were addressed in five of the nine focus groups. See Table 5 for a list of inputs desired by parents for inclusion in school accountability systems by focus group.
Parent inputs were further explored by state. We were interested in learning if parents in different states invoked particular inputs at differing rates. For each state, there was at least one input that was articulated across all three focus groups; however, interestingly, what universally emerged in each state differed for each of the three states under study. See Table 6 for a list of the inputs invoked across focus groups by state.

3.3.1. Arizona

Student-to-teacher ratios and teacher turnover were the inputs articulated by parents across all three of the Arizona focus groups conducted. One participant shared that he believed that teacher turnover was important “because if…teachers like where they’re at, it’s going to be a good atmosphere for … not just … staff, but also the students.” Another shared, “I like to see consistent teachers.” Participants in each group also stressed the importance of class size. One parent shared, “It’s a lot better to be in a smaller class. You get more attention from the teacher than it is when you get these big schools with the big enrollments … you have a teacher that’s overwhelmed.” When we asked participants to assign their child’s school a grade (discussed in greater detail in the next section), one parent who was mostly satisfied with their child’s school assigned a lower grade, and their stated reason was large class sizes. Parents noted a direct connection between class sizes and the amount of individualized attention their child was likely to receive. Several observed a connection between teacher retention efforts and student-to-teacher ratios. When teachers leave and cannot readily be replaced, class sizes often grow.

3.3.2. North Carolina

Standardized test scores, student and teacher diversity, and teacher credentials were discussed in each of the three North Carolina focus groups. Parents viewed test scores not only as evidence of student learning but also as a proxy for other facets of schooling, which they valued. One parent shared, “… if you had to choose one [metric to consider], which one are you going to choose? … you’re going to choose the school that has the highest [state] test scores, right? … I’m going to look at the high [state] test scores and I’m gonna hope it’s because of the teacher engagement, the student engagement, and [fewer] discipline issues … where kids feel safe.” Diversity was another issue discussed in each of the North Carolina focus groups. Black or African American participants initially invoked it most often, with White parents adding to the discussion thereafter. Participants from North Carolina shared that they were not only discussing racial diversity. As one parent shared:
What percentage of the school is diverse? And not just, you know, racial diversity. It could be religious; it could be anything. … A lot of times when I see diversity ratings, they normally are [describing] the students. I also want to see that diversity in the staff, teachers, and administration. I want to see it in the school board. [This matters because] those people see your children just as much as you do because they’re there all day.
These parents viewed it as important that their children learn to engage in a world where these differences exist. Participants shared that it was also important for diversity to exist among the adults engaged in educating their children as well. Teacher credentials were the third input that was discussed in each of the North Carolina focus groups, though participants readily admitted that they were unsure how to measure it. Their primary interest was that teachers were continually updating their skills and receiving relevant professional development, whether that involved additional certifications, formal postsecondary education, or informal types of learning.

3.3.3. Texas

One input surfaced in each of the Texas focus groups—safety and student discipline. For most of the parents who invoked student safety, it was their number one concern. Participants described the need for there to be a safe environment before it could be an environment conducive to learning. One parent shared, “Regardless of the grade of the school, [my priority is] safety. … Have there been violent or mild incidents between students [and/or] staff?
Another parent shared, “I really feel sorry for all kids in [their school district] … with shootings and fights and … the disrespect for teachers and authority. It’s just really hard to teach in these times.” Parents shared that they wanted to know the rates of violent incidents at schools as a metric for judging their quality. It is worth noting that as of this writing, Texas experienced one of the most recent high-profile school shootings among the three states included in this study6.

3.4. How Aligned Are State-Issued and Parent-Assigned School Letter Grades?

Each parent was asked to assign a letter grade for their child’s school, along with a rationale for why they assigned the grade. Parents were also asked to privately share with us the name of their child’s school using the chat feature in Zoom. We subsequently visited the Arizona Department of Education, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and Texas Education Agency’s websites to find the state-issued letter grades for each of the participants’ children’s schools. Of interest was to learn how similar or different parent and state appraisals of school quality were. Of the 34 participants who shared their child’s school name with us, 18 gave their child’s school the same letter grade as did their state’s accountability system (52.94%). Of the 16 participants whose assigned grade differed from what the state assigned, half (n = 8) assigned a higher grade than the state (e.g., parent assigned the school an A, state assigned the school a C), and half (n = 8) assigned their child’s school a lower grade than the state. Thirty of the 34 participants (88.24%) assigned their child’s school a letter grade that was either the same or one letter grade different from that which the state assigned the school. Although in many cases, the parent-assigned grades were either identical or similar to those issued by the state, the reasoning behind participants’ grades was vastly different from the inputs their state department of education considered and was primarily based on their child’s individual experience at the school. The accountability systems for each of the three states included in this study are primarily based on standardized test scores; however, parents rarely mentioned test scores when justifying the letter grade they assigned to their child’s school.

4. Discussion

The purpose of this study was to understand the extent to which U.S. state letter-grade accountability systems were useful to parents in making decisions about schooling for their children, as well as the extent to which these accountability systems were in line with the priorities of parents of school-age children. Most of the parents who participated in this research shared that they located information about schools from sources other than the state education department website. While some of the participants were aware of the existence of the letter grade system, and most understood that a grade of A, for example, indicated high school quality, there was little understanding of what went into the state-issued grades. A couple of parents stated that they knew standardized test scores were part of it, but they did not understand how the grade was arrived at beyond that. Given the amount of labor and treasure that go into the creation and maintenance of these accountability systems, it is incumbent upon government actors to make the public aware of the ratings, as well as the aspects of school that factor into these ratings.
When asked what should inform a letter-grade-based accountability system, a plurality of parents invoked standardized test scores and graduation rates as inputs—the same factors that were prominent in Arizona’s, North Carolina’s, and Texas’s state report card grades. However, it is worth noting that more than three in five parents did not list test scores as a priority. About half of the parents assigned their child’s school the same grade as the state, albeit often for very different reasons than those that informed the state’s letter-grade assignment. In short, parent priorities often focused on their and their child’s specific experiences with the school, not overall measures of test score proficiency or year-over-year growth. These findings are in line with a recent statewide survey conducted by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (2022). It found that while almost three quarters of parents believed standardized test scores should be part of the formula that determines report card grades, almost 90% desired a formula that includes aspects of schooling beyond test results.
To some extent, our findings also highlight risks involved with an accountability system that is fully deferential to parental desires. While teacher:student ratios are tied for second as the most commonly cited input for school quality, research on the importance of teacher-student ratios vis-à-vis student outcomes suggests that the effect of reducing ratios on student achievement is modest or null (Filges et al., 2018). Simply put, while parents are uniquely situated to evaluate their children’s needs, it is also the case that parents could be lacking in knowledge about schools or misinformed about what factors causally produce stronger academic performance (Sonnenschein et al., 2014). At least one prior study indicates that parents, on average, become more informed consumers when exercising school choice options (Kisida & Wolf, 2010). Still, inevitably, the risk of informational deficiencies or asymmetries persists.
Part of the theory that undergirds the use of A–F letter-grade systems suggests that transparent information will help parents effectively decide their children’s schooling (Polikoff et al., 2014). Like other recent surveys (e.g., McShane, 2024) and studies (e.g., Kogan et al., 2016), our findings cast doubt upon the utility of A–F grading systems when it comes to providing actionable information. One possibility for the disconnect between the inputs that inform A–F letter grades and parent priorities could be the lack of input solicited from parents prior to the creation and deployment of these accountability systems. Notably, one study observed that parents expressed more confidence in school quality report cards when they utilize a more holistic evaluation system that more closely aligns with parental ideas about school quality (Schneider et al., 2018).
A recent and dramatic expansion in school choice also introduces a new wrinkle when it comes to the political legitimacy of performance frameworks. Between 2022 and early 2025, 18 states adopted some form of educational savings accounts (ESA) legislation, which allows parents to direct a portion of the tax dollars that would have been expended on their child’s public education to non-public educational options (EdChoice, 2025; Marshall & Pressley, 2024)—none of which will receive an A–F rating. The logic animating the dramatic expansion in school choice is that parents, rather than state officials, are best situated to assess school quality. If that belief marks a sustained paradigm shift in how policymakers think about school quality, then the A–F framework would be operating at odds with prevailing wisdom rather than in sync with it. Whether the nascent evolution toward maximizing market principles in education supplants or supplements test-based accountability bears watching. Ultimately, a dashboard system like the one currently utilized in California may offer a path toward bridging these different accountability regimes. One could envision a scenario where any school that takes public funds (including private schools) must publish testing outcomes in the interest of providing parents more information in the education marketplace.

Limitations

There are limitations worth noting in this work. The goal of qualitative research is not generalizability; rather, it is that of transferability (Maxwell, 2013). The perspectives shared with us in these focus groups represent those of the 44 participants who shared their views with us and might not be reflective of the views of other parents in Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas, or those from other states that employ A–F letter-grade accountability regimes. Additional quantitative studies should be conducted to understand the extent to which these findings hold across larger, representative samples. Also, the participants in this study predominantly lived in suburban areas and enrolled their children in suburban schools. The schools they enrolled their children in also performed average to very well according to their assigned letter grades; only one participant enrolled their child in a school that earned a state-issued grade below a C. Future research should explore the views of urban and rural parents, as well as the perspectives of those whose children attend schools that perform more poorly on state metrics. Finally, the incentive for participating in this study was a single USD 150 payment. It is near the upper limit for incentives offered for participating in a single focus group. While it is possible that this incited some to participate who earned lower incomes. It is also possible that it helped to incite a more representative sample of parents who enroll their children in traditional public schools, including middle and upper-middle-class parents who might not have participated for a smaller amount. We do not have direct evidence that either of these competing possibilities is true.

5. Conclusions

The United States is in an era of radical rethinking when it comes to K-12 education. The parents who participated in this study’s focus groups suggested that while a plurality of them wanted to know about their child’s school’s test results, a majority were more interested in other markers of success. Our findings do not tip the scale in determining what the future ought to hold. They do, however, call attention to significant tensions with current test-based accountability regimes like the A–F report card coexisting with market-based education reform models. Specifically, while the former entrusts central authorities with making decisions about school quality, the latter embraces the normative idea that “parents know best”. Our focus groups indicate that parents are interested in test scores, but that alone is not sufficient to meet their needs. Ultimately, test-based accountability may have to become less prescriptive to coexist harmoniously with market-based solutions.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, I.K. and D.T.M.; methodology, I.K. and D.T.M.; software, D.T.M. and C.M.D.; validation, D.T.M. and C.M.D.; formal analysis, D.T.M. and C.M.D.; investigation, I.K., D.T.M. and C.M.D.; resources, I.K.; data curation, I.K. and D.T.M.; writing—original draft preparation, I.K., D.T.M. and C.M.D.; writing—review and editing, I.K. and D.T.M.; visualization, n/a; supervision, I.K. and D.T.M.; project administration, I.K. and D.T.M.; funding acquisition, I.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Educational Freedom Institute.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Auburn University (protocol code: #23-421 EX 2308; date of approval: 1 September 2023).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

The data presented in this study are not publicly available due to ethical restrictions and privacy concerns related to participant confidentiality. These restrictions are stipulated by the Institutional Review Board approval governing this research. Requests regarding data inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Acknowledgments

This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled Making the grade: Parent perceptions of A–F school report card grade accountability regimes, which was presented at the 2024 International School Choice and Reform Conference in Madrid, Spain, 4–7 January 2024, where this research was presented (Kingsbury et al., 2024). The authors appreciate the thoughtful feedback received from conference attendees.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Appendix A

Table A1 presents example codes used during qualitative data analysis. Each code presented includes a working definition and an example quote to which the code was applied.
Table A1. Selected Codes for Analysis.
Table A1. Selected Codes for Analysis.
CodeDefinitionExample in Data
info_webUsed when participants described accessing web-based resources when deciding where to enroll their children.“So, I just went on Google…and a lot of people had reviews there, and then I look at [the school’s] Facebook. I try to Google them in the news to see if anything comes up.”
grades_awareUsed when participants affirmed that they were aware of their state’s letter-grade system.“I knew it existed. I just … didn’t know what’s included.”
grades_unawareUsed when participants indicated that they were unaware of their state’s letter-grade system.“Where is that grade found? No one has sent out a flyer [saying], ‘Hey, check your school’s grade.’”
spedUsed when participants discussed issues related to special education services.“My son is a high-functioning autistic, so, I was concerned when moving down that he was going to get the attention he needed.”
teach_turnoverUsed when participants discussed issues related to teacher retention or attrition.“Last year my daughter, I think she had like four or five substitutes, and then the actual teacher lasted like two or three weeks. So, it was constantly changing, and I didn’t think she was getting anything out of it.”
testingUsed when participants referenced standardized testing.“I would see what the … test scores are … how [well] their students are scoring.”

Notes

1
These states were selected based on recent policy enacted or pushed in their state legislatures. The three states included in this study recently approved legislation allowing education savings accounts, which would allow non-public schools that are not subject to letter-grade accountability systems to receive public funds (EdChoice, 2025). No a priori hypotheses were generated, since the purpose of qualitative research does not involve testing hypotheses (Bazen et al., 2021; Maxwell, 2013; McMillan, 2022).
2
The study was approved by Auburn University’s Institutional Review Board (23-421 EX 2308).
3
For parents with more than one child currently enrolled in school, we asked them to respond regarding their perspectives on the oldest currently enrolled child’s school.
4
Guest et al. (2017) have found that 80% of themes are surfaced within 2–3 focus groups, and 90% of themes were discovered within 3–6 focus groups. For this study, we conducted nine focus groups overall, lending credibility to our overall findings, and 3 per state, meeting their guidance.
5
If parents listed more than four items, we only counted the first four items they invoked.
6
Two teachers and 19 students were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, USA on 24 May 2022.

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Table 1. Inputs included in State Letter-Grade Systems for Grades K-8.
Table 1. Inputs included in State Letter-Grade Systems for Grades K-8.
U.S. StateAchievementGrowthAbsenteeismEL
Proficiency		Achievement GapOther
Alabama40.040.015.05.0**
Arizona30.050.0*10.0*10.0
Florida ^56.044.0*****
Louisiana70.025.0****5.0
Mississippi47.547.5*5.8**
North Carolina80.020.0*****
Oklahoma41.235.311.811.8**
Tennessee50.050.0****
Texas70.0 ***70.0 ****3.027.0*
Note: Figures reflect percentages; Figures may not add to 100% due to rounding; * not applicable; ** part of Achievement indicator; *** Texas allows schools to use whichever value is greater between achievement and growth; EL = English language (for non-native speakers); ^ For middle school grades, Florida weights achievement at 44%, growth at 44%, and middle grades acceleration at 12%; Sources: Alabama State Department of Education (2024), Arizona State Board of Education (2025a); Bureau of Accountability Reporting (2024); Mississippi State Board of Education (n.d.); North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (2024); Oklahoma Education (2025); Tennessee Department of Education (2025); Texas Education Agency (2025).
Table 2. Inputs included in State Letter-Grade Systems for Grades 9–12.
Table 2. Inputs included in State Letter-Grade Systems for Grades 9–12.
U.S. StateAchievementGrowthAbsenteeismEL
Proficiency		GraduationCCROther
Alabama20.025.010.05.030.010.0*
Arizona30.020.0*10.020.020.0*
Florida40.040.0***10.010.0*
Louisiana12.512.5***45.025.0*
Mississippi28.538.0*5.019.04.84.8
North Carolina80.020.0********
Oklahoma52.9*11.811.811.811.8*
Tennessee50.040.0***10.0*
Texas70.0 ***70.0 ****3.03.09.015.0
Note: Figures reflect percentages; Figures may not add to 100% due to rounding; * not applicable; ** part of Achievement indicator; *** Texas allows schools to use whichever value is greater between achievement and growth; EL = English language (for non-native speakers); Sources: Alabama State Department of Education (2024); Arizona State Board of Education (2025b); Bureau of Accountability Reporting (2024); Louisiana Department of Education (n.d.); Mississippi State Board of Education (n.d.); North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (2024); Oklahoma Education (2025); Tennessee Department of Education (2025); Texas Education Agency (2025).
Table 3. Demographics of Participants.
Table 3. Demographics of Participants.
VariableN%MSD
Number of school-age children 1.810.88
Gender
 Female1850.00
 Male1850.00
Race/Ethnicity
 African American/Black822.22
 Asian American38.33
 Hispanic/Latino/a1233.33
 White1336.11
Urbanicity
 Rural38.11
 Suburban2670.77
 Urban821.62
Note: Seven participants did not complete the demographic survey; of those who completed the survey, one participant elected not to answer the item about gender, and one elected not to answer the item about race/ethnicity.
Table 4. Top 10 inputs parents desired to be included in accountability systems.
Table 4. Top 10 inputs parents desired to be included in accountability systems.
InputN%
Standardized test scores1638.10
Graduation rates1638.10
College preparation1228.57
Student-to-teacher ratio1228.57
Communication with teachers819.05
Safety/student discipline819.05
Special education services819.05
Student grades819.05
Teacher credentials614.29
Teacher turnover614.29
N = 42; 2 participants elected not to weigh in.
Table 5. Inputs desired by parents by focus group.
Table 5. Inputs desired by parents by focus group.
InputN%
Student-to-teacher ratios666.67
College preparation555.56
Graduation rates555.56
Safety/student discipline555.56
Standardized test scores555.56
Teacher credentials555.56
Note: Unit of analysis for this table is the focus group (N = 9).
Table 6. Inputs Identified by All Focus Groups for Each State.
Table 6. Inputs Identified by All Focus Groups for Each State.
Arizona
  • Student-to-teacher ratio
  • Teacher turnover
North Carolina
  • Standardized test scores
  • Student/teacher diversity
  • Teacher credentials
Texas
  • Safety/student discipline
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Kingsbury, I.; Marshall, D.T.; Doak, C.M. Making the Grade: Parent Perceptions of A–F School Report Card Grade Accountability Regimes in the United States. Educ. Sci. 2025, 15, 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070885

AMA Style

Kingsbury I, Marshall DT, Doak CM. Making the Grade: Parent Perceptions of A–F School Report Card Grade Accountability Regimes in the United States. Education Sciences. 2025; 15(7):885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070885

Chicago/Turabian Style

Kingsbury, Ian, David T. Marshall, and Candace M. Doak. 2025. "Making the Grade: Parent Perceptions of A–F School Report Card Grade Accountability Regimes in the United States" Education Sciences 15, no. 7: 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070885

APA Style

Kingsbury, I., Marshall, D. T., & Doak, C. M. (2025). Making the Grade: Parent Perceptions of A–F School Report Card Grade Accountability Regimes in the United States. Education Sciences, 15(7), 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15070885

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