States across the country, including Missouri, are beginning to release annual school accountability report cards with letter grades, reigniting debates over how to evaluate school quality. Yet, before the first set of grades has even been released, Missouri superintendents are calling them incomplete pictures, potentially flawed, and redundant.
In Arizona, the department of education recently released its 2026 school letter grades, revealing that the share of high schools receiving a D or F surged from 1.8 percent to 8 percent. Administrator groups immediately lobbied the state board to freeze grading thresholds, arguing that honest lower grades would “confuse parents.”
This administrative resistance highlights a critical accountability challenge Show-Me Institute researchers have mentioned many times before, which is the pressure public school systems often face to dilute grading standards. As Missouri prepares to roll out official A–F letter grades for public schools under Governor Kehoe’s executive order, it will face the true test of an accountability system—withstanding political pushback.
Adults inside the education bureaucracy have powerful incentives to lobby for inflated ratings. High grades shield administrators from scrutiny and allow failing schools to avoid uncomfortable reforms. Yet when states capitulate by lowering cut scores or introducing subjective surveys about the “climate” of schools, report cards cease to serve their primary purpose of informing parents and identifying struggling schools in need of intervention. To its credit, Missouri’s school and district grading system has an automatic ratchet mechanism that raises performance thresholds if 65 percent of schools earn an A or B. Indiana and Florida have similar mechanisms.
Acknowledging low performance requires institutional courage. An A–F letter grade is not an indictment of teachers. Rather, it is meant to be a clear diagnostic tool. Without unvarnished transparency, underperforming schools cannot improve. To date, Missouri’s accountability system for districts has been meaningless. More than 99 percent of districts are fully accredited. As Missouri finalizes its school grading framework, state leaders must follow the lessons of states like Arizona and Florida and resist administrative pressure to lower the bar. It’s time to give parents the clear, honest information they deserve.
