I am a plaintiff in two court cases that challenge the LEARNS Act and not at liberty to argue those in this forum. Those who are interested may access them as they are public record. However, there are a plethora of other problems with the LEARNS Act, some that could become court cases in the future.

I was going through some papers the other day when I came across one of my old school report cards, tucked inside a yellowed envelope, the edges softened by time. I remember the feeling of carrying that piece of paper home--the way my stomach would do a little flip-flop, hoping the neat rows of letters would be good enough to make my parents proud. In a family, a report card is a baseline between a child, a teacher, and a parent, meant to show what might need attention or where a job is well done.

Then, when looking over the first full release of the Arkansas LEARNS Act school letter grades recently, it hit me with a cold thud how drastically we have changed the meaning of a report card when we turn it into public policy.

The state's ledger is out: 122 As, 291 Bs, 352 Cs, 137 Ds, and 130 Fs. That means roughly one in four of our public schools was branded with a D or an F. The folks who engineered this system from their offices in Little Rock tell us it's a triumph of transparency. They say it gives parents a clear look at performance and applies a healthy dose of pressure to systems that are falling behind.

But anyone who has ever stood at the front of an Arkansas classroom knows that these grades aren't actually measuring school quality. They are mostly just tracking poverty.

Standardized test scores are and have always been a mirror reflecting a family's household income and parental education levels. When we hang a public F over a........

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