During the Clinton presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s staff used this phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In current discussions about education, the phrase should be, “It’s poverty, stupid.”

Jan Resseger demonstrates how precisely Ohio’s school grades measure poverty, not school quality. 

She begins:

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a stunning analysis, by the newspaper’s data analyst Rich Exner, of the school district grades awarded by the state of Ohio on the state report cards released last week.  The new report cards are based on data from the 2018-2019 school year.  I encourage you to follow the link to look at Exner’s series of bar graphs, which, like this one, present a series of almost perfect downward staircases, with “A” grades for school districts in communities with high median income and “F” grades for the school districts in Ohio’s poorest communities.

The correlation of academic achievement with family…