Giving Compass' Take:

• New research shows that low grades at New York City schools resulted in low turnover and attracted more effective educators. 

• How can philanthropy help support struggling schools? What do disadvantaged students need to thrive? 

• Find out how leadership support for administrators makes an impact on students. 

Sometimes a bad grade is a good sign.

New research suggests that in New York City, giving schools a failing or near-failing grade reduced teacher turnover and helped attract more effective educators.

These results cut against the theory that low district-assigned grades would have precisely the opposite effect. They also provide new evidence that the now defunct A–F grading scale sparked improvements at underperforming city schools.

The study will be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Resources. Because it focuses on comparing low-rated schools to those that received slightly higher grades, the study doesn’t offer a definitive verdict on how the grading system the city used from 2007 to 2014 affected the district as a whole.

What the findings do show: Schools that received a letter grade of D or F saw a 20 percent reduction in teacher turnover, compared to similar schools that barely scored one grade higher. The schools with lower grades also attracted higher-performing teachers, as measured by their ability to improve student test scores over time.

Read the full article about failing grades by Alex Zimmerman at Chalkbeat.