While reading “Ben Bernanke’s Fed: The Federal Reserve After Greenspan” (Harvard University Press, $26.95, 235 pages), by Lehman Brothers economist Ethan Harris, I began to wonder whether his children attend(ed) the same school mine did.

My children attended a school that didn’t give grades. Each semester, they received three written evaluations during each semester. The first evaluation from each teacher looked the same, including a paragraph describing what would be expected of the students and why the teacher was confident--after just a few weeks of classes--that my children would fit in.

By the time the third and final report came in, I had a clear picture, but still no grade.

Whether or not Harris was inspired by that school, he has the formula down pat in his book.

Title notwithstanding, he comes close to offering a clear picture. But, indeed, before we even hit the pages with Arabic numerals, Harris writes (on page viii) “it is much too early to provide a final judgment on the Bernanke-led Fed.”

The reader could stop there.

Harris’s work begins as an economics text, then morphs into a primer on the Federal Reserve and a mini-biography of Bernanke. It winds up as a paean to the Chairman, without offering a hard assessment of his tenure.

Harris is gifted and facile writer, but falls a bit short as a reporter.

He notes the Federal Open Market Committee has become more democratic under Bernanke.

“Excluding the chairman,” Harris wrote, “there are usually between ten and twelve voting members on the FOMC and there are at least eight votes per year, implying an average of close to 100 opportunities to dissent per year. During Greenspan’s tenure, actual annual dissents fell from a high of 11 in the late 1980s to almost none in his last seven years.”  What Harris leaves out--which would have bolstered his argument--is that in the first two years of Bernanke’s tenure (completed before the book went to press) there were 8 dissents. Since then, there have been six more.

As Harris writes, Bernanke wasn’t really tested or pressed when he was named to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Fed when Greenspan’s term ended in January 2006.

“Wall Street,” Harris wrote, “gave Bernanke mixed reviews. Business economists welcomed Bush’s choice [but] to people on Main Street, Bernanke seemed like Greenspan-lite: an undistinguished imitation of the original.”

Harris suggests Bernanke hasn’t made much of an impression, despite the influence of the Federal Reserve.

“A year-and-a-half into Bernanke’s term,” according to Harris, “a Wall Street Journal poll pegged Bernanke’s approval rating at 12% and a 7% disapproval rating…67% of respondents didn’t know who he was.”

Harris tries mightily to defend Bernanke, and in the process, perhaps unwittingly, defend Lehman Brothers (LEH), where he is the chief economist.

“The truth is,” Harris wrote, “that the vast majority of economists and other experts--including the author of this book--were greatly surprised by the scope of the crisis in capital markets.”

The Fed, Harris adds “did no worse than most of the economics profession in anticipating the depth and economic impact of the financial crisis.”

He adds: “If Bernanke was asleep at the wheel, he woke up a lot faster than his fiscal policy peers.”

Trying to assess Bernanke’s two-plus years at the Fed is a monumental task. He has been variously accused of being too academic and too slow to react and then acting too aggressively with rate cuts and new devices to re-energize a financial system rocked by both credit and liquidity.

Harris does provide the reader with an opportunity and reason to take a closer look at how the Fed has reacted to the housing meltdown and the resulting credit crisis. The Fed, Harris says, “should not be judged by 20-20 hindsight or the warnings of a few unusually pessimistic forecasters, but by what other forecasters were thinking in real time.”

The strongest criticism Harris offers of Bernanke is his failure to communicate clearly, ironic because Harris notes “under Greenspan, the Fed invited criticism by acting as though it had something to hide.”  And, Harris, added, “The markets had their doubts about Bernanke when he stepped into the job, and bouts of poor communication have lessened confidence in his leadership.”

According to Harris, Bernanke was ambitious to become chairman of the Fed, not a surprise since it would be the pinnacle of success for an economist much the way a seat on the Supreme Court should be the goal of any law student or a plaque in the Hall of Fame the objective of every Little Leaguer.

Bernanke, Harris insists though, was apolitical with even his closest friends not realizing he is a Republican. The insistence is somewhat disingenuous. Bernanke, during his tenure as chair of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, parroted the administration’s economic agenda.

Bernanke, Harris notes though, “stuck close to the party line at the CEA,” because  “to do otherwise would likely have caused the Bush administration to send him packing back to Princeton and ended his bid to be Fed chairman.”

Just four lines later, Harris claims, “In the political realm, Bernanke is the exact opposite of Greenspan. Greenspan was the consummate insider. By contrast, and by all accounts, Bernanke is remarkably nonpartisan.”

Harris does brave a forecast, suggesting, “a continued aggressive response to likely further economic weakness. I also think the Fed has learned two lessons from the housing bubble; lean against signs of an emerging bubble and don’t wait too long to normalize interest rates once the economy finds its feet.”

Yet, he concludes where he began. “Basically, since Bernanke has little more than two years on his belt, it’s really not fair to give his Fed any grade other than an incomplete.”

That about sums up Harris’ effort as well.