The mid-November release of the last School Progress Reports under Mayor Bloomberg prompted relief, followed by discussion about the reports’ future and the kind of tools parents need to assess schools.

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has vowed to do away with Bloomberg’s A-F letter grades and re-examine school accountability.

Even the creator of the reports, Jim Liebman, and the Department of Education’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, have backed away from the grades, saying they rely too much on test scores and have led to a narrowing of curriculum.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the DOE had created a “perverse accountability system” by assigning a predetermined number of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s and F’s, based on a single year of tests scores. “The thing that bothers us more than anything else is there must be losers. Even restaurants don’t have a limit as to how many A’s are awarded,” he said.

School grades that once struck fear into the hearts of schools and teachers under Bloomberg had far less impact this time. Grades for elementary and middle schools are assigned on a curve, so similar to last year, 25 percent received A’s this year, 6 percent got D’s, and 24 schools, 2 percent, were branded with F’s. The introduction of harder Common Core tests did not change the distribution.

In academic high schools, 26 percent got A’s, down from 33 percent last year. There was a three-point rise in college- and career- ready graduates, to 31.4 percent.

Without dire consequences like closing schools, progress reports could be used to create schools’ performance and progress goals or determine what assistance they need, a recent panel of educators suggested. “What we hear from schools is they want to change the conversation from consequences to supports,” said UFT Vice President Catalina Fortino.

Parents need a tool to appraise schools, but it should be based on more than test scores, Mulgrew said. The reports should include the curricula and programs the school provides and be based on several years of varied data.

The progress reports’ letter grades for elementary, middle and K-8 schools are based primarily on how much individual students in grades 3 through 8 improved on the state’s English and math exams from one year to the next and how well the students did on the most recent exams. The remaining 15 percent is based on the school’s environment, as gauged by attendance records and surveys of parents, teachers and students.

The high school progress reports are based on a wider array of indicators, including graduation rates, Regents exam pass rates, college-readiness rates and how many classes students pass each year.