School Data Now Available for Decision-Making

Published September 1, 2004

The growth of the standards and assessment movement is yielding an abundance of school-level student achievement data for parents, educators, and policy makers. Several organizations provide school-level achievement information online.

The Broad Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, Just for the Kids, and Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services teamed up recently to create the School Information Partnership at http://www.schoolresults.org. Through this interactive Web site, districts and schools can disseminate state and district report cards. Parents, educators, and policy makers can use a variety of comparative tools to analyze school achievement and make policy decisions.

“Parents have a right to know how their students are performing in school, and whether they are learning in a particular school,” said Dan Katzir, managing director of The Broad Foundation. “The School Information Partnership provides powerful tools for parents so that they can acquire the information they need to make informed decisions about their children’s futures.”

Other Web sites also provide parents, educators, and policy makers with school- level information. http://www.greatschools.net and http://www.just4kids.org/ are two such online providers. In some communities, newspapers provide information about schools. The Seattle Times, for example, provides an online guide at http://schoolguide.seattletimes.nwsource.com/.

Additionally, states post online information. Some state departments of education have provided school-level data online for years. Others have only just begun doing so in order to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

According to the Education Commission of the States (ECS), most states are at least partially on track toward providing school report cards that provide information on schools’ achievement rates, graduation rates, teacher qualifications, and other indicators. ECS is monitoring the implementation of state report cards and other NCLB requirements for all 50 states at http://nclb2.ecs.org/NCLBSURVEY/nclb.aspx?Target=NG.

K.K.