Providing Statewide Access to School Data for All Stakeholders
Policy Rationale And Goals:
Over the past decade, many states have been actively engaged in disseminating
educational data to the public. As policymakers, parents, and the public have
demanded better performance from the education system, a wide range of state
report cards have been put in place as mechanisms for public accountability.
Often, the report cards form the basis for other state-level decisions
including how sanctions or rewards might be meted out to schools,
administrators, teachers, and students.
In
1994, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) began 
to conduct an annual survey of state departments of education that compiles information on
the status of state education accountability reports and state reports on
education indicators. According to the most recent annual report by the CCSSO,
"states have taken a more active role in regularly reporting indicators of the
status of public education, including results of student assessments, data on
students and teachers, and school finance data." CCSSO reports that as of
August 1998, all state education agencies but one had at least one annual accountability or indicator report, with forty states producing two or more reports. Most of the states that have mandated a report (47) publish statistics at the district level and a smaller number of states (39) require statistics to be reported at the school level. 
While public reporting of data has become an increasingly visible part of state accountability systems, a 1995 report by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) asks the question: "Is your state's education report card changing in a fundamental and important way?" In other words, does the state report card provide a mechanism for assisting schools in reaching state proficiency levels and utilizing data for the school improvement process which are at the core of most state accountability reforms.
According to SREB (1995), early state report cards emphasized educational "inputs" including such facts and figures as district and community characteristics, student characteristics, finance, and counts of teachers and other staff. Some early report cards also included student scores on standardized tests, performance on Advanced Placement examinations, and dropout rates. As state reforms that emphasize student performance on state adopted standards began to spread, state report cards started to report school-by-school comparisons of student performance to new state performance benchmarks. According to SREB, state report cards that emphasize student proficiency move away from emphasizing a school's constraints to detailing goals for all students, regardless of circumstances. Many states are engaged in improving state report cards, and Florida, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee provide three examples of easily accessible information systems for school sites, parents, and the public. Each of these examples is available on the World Wide Web.
Florida (http://www.firn.edu/doe): According to the Florida Department of Education, "the Florida School Indicators Report is designed as a ready-reference guide providing data on every school for each of Florida's 67 school districts." School-by-school or district-by-district comparisons can be made for each of the indicators included on the report card. The data is compiled from the Department of Education's automated student, staff, and finance databases using school district reported data.
The Florida School Indicators Report provides a wide range of data on schools in an easily accessible format. The indicators and comparisons are intended to provide the basis for further analysis at the local level.
The Florida School Indicators Report includes the following information:
- Results on the American College Test
- Average class size
- Percentage of students passing reading, writing, and mathematics college placement tests
- Dropout rate
- Proficiency of 4th, 8th, and 10th graders on the Florida Writes assessment
- Follow-up of graduates regarding full- and part-time employment or continuing education or both
- Free/reduced-price lunch eligibility
- Gifted placement
- Twelfth-grade graduation rate
- High School Competency Test Scores -- a basic skills test in mathematics and communications administered in the 11th grade which students must pass to earn a standard diploma
- Incidents of crime and violence
- Limited English proficient students statistics
- Mobility rate
- Norm referenced test results for 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math
- Total number of students and per-pupil expenditures
- Promotion rate
- SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores
- School operating costs
- School staff information
- Number of students absent 21+ days
- Information on students with disabilities
- In and out of school suspensions
- Teacher education and experience
Florida also mandates that the Department of Education and school districts produce a report known as the School Advisory Council Report (SACR). The SACR includes state, district, and school level data and covers test scores, dropout and graduation rates, information on school staff, attendance figures, and readiness to start school. The SACR must be kept on file at the school and/or district office. In addition, districts and schools must use the SACR data to distribute a School Public Accountability Report (SPAR) to parents of students. Florida also produces a School Accountability Report based partially on data in the SACR and adds information about school achievement, learning environment, and student characteristics, shown relative to state medians.
Pennsylvania (http://www.paprofiles.org): According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the purpose of the School Profiles is to provide assistance to public school personnel and all citizens in evaluating a public school's qualities: "The School Profiles may provide valuable information for discussions aimed at making decisions to improve the quality of the public education system serving the children of Pennsylvania." While the purpose of the information is to provide easily accessible information, Pennsylvania also solicits feedback from "public school system customers" to ensure that the information in the profiles is useful. Accordingly, "many indicators used in our new school profile design resulted from customer feedback from school district/vocational-technical school representatives along with parents and business persons." In addition, the Pennsylvania Department of Education provides a feedback form and questionnaire on its web site that can be mailed or faxed back to the department.
School Profiles are provided for primary, intermediate, middle, and high schools and are designed to provide tailored information at these program levels. School profiles can be found on the web site by county, a general area on a map of Pennsylvania, or searching for the school by name.
Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, School Profiles include the following data:
- Enrollment and attendance
- School year attendance
- Student attendance rates
- Percent low income
- Grade 11 enrollment stability
- Graduate intentions
- Finance (percent to instruction, support service, and non-instructional services)
- District and state comparison
- Dropouts (school, district, and state comparisons)
- Class size
- Staffing
- Number of professional staff
- Number of support staff
- Teacher absenteeism and professional development
- Programs available in this school (i.e. Title I)
- Vocational programs offered
- Technology and library resources
- College Entrance Examining Board and Advanced Placement participation
- Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (school, district, state, and similar schools) in Grade 11 Math and Reading and Grade 9 Writing
- School district assessment
- Commercial standardized testing
- Portfolio usage
According to Vince Safran, an official in the Vocational Techncial Education Division of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the School Profiles are an invaluable tool for beginning to evaluate the kinds of technical assistance that may be needed at a particular school. The School Profiles are widely available and are mailed on CD-ROM to public libraries, schools, and other public agencies. Safron also distributes the School Profiles to participants during site visits to schools and area vocational technical schools participating in SREB's High Schools That Work network. The profiles provide a baseline of information that frame the discussion and subsequent evaluation and technical assistance plan that the site generates.
Tennessee (http://www.state.tn.us/education/rptcrd98): "The 21st Century Schools Report Cards provide parents, educators, local officials, business, and industry leaders and community members with an inside look at how their schools are performing and how state education funds are being spent. The report cards also provide an annual accounting to the public for progress being made toward state and national education goals."
Since passing the Education Improvement Act, Tennessee has published seven sets of annual accountability reports. According to the Tennessee Department of Education, the accountability report cards are intended to inform parents and taxpayers of how much money is being spent on the system as well as the results on standardized achievement tests, student attendance rates, and promotion and dropout rates. Data included on the reports are collected from local school systems and compiled by various offices in the department. In addition, the 1998 Report Card Supplements "contain additional types of data, including test scores for individual schools, value-added assessment results showing student gains, school system audits conducted by the department's Internal Audit section, and school-by-school information on meeting class size standards."
Indicators in the Tennessee 21st Century Schools Program include the following data:
- School demographics
- School accreditation
- Student attendance, promotion, and dropout rates
- Suspension and expulsion rates
- Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program scores
- Tennessee's Value-Added Assessment System providing trend data on school and school system effects on student performance
- High school subject matter test scores
- Results on the ACT, SAT, and Work Keys exams (high school seniors must take the ACT, SAT, or Work Keys exam to graduate)
- Writing assessment results
- Tennessee Competency Test
- Class-size reduction efforts and waivers
- Teacher qualifications and personnel breakdown
- Operating expenditures and expenditures per student
- Average teacher salary
- Breakdown of local and state funding sources
- State improvement funds and funding increases
According to the Department of Education, the state report card system is not intended to "rate" or "rank" school systems, but to provide information about school performance that will initiate public dialogue about schools at the local level. In an effort to inform the public about how students of various backgrounds are doing, "Tennessee's `Value-Added' Assessment' tracks the gains students make on nationally normed tests over the course of their school careers." (Education Week, 1999, p.24) The value-added assessment system focuses on the effect of school over time and is intended to put students on a level playing field by comparing results from individual students as they progress through the state's school system.
"At the heart of the data reporting process is an emphasis on school improvement.... These reports enable all Tennesseans to know what their education tax dollars have achieved and to make important decisions about the teaching and learning process." The Tennessee accountability report card is also summarized at the state level to show more broadly what is being accomplished statewide and to keep track of progress made since the enactment of the Education Improvement Act.
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). (1998). State education accountability reports and indicator reports: Status of reports across the states. (Results of a 50-state survey). Washington, DC: CCSSO, State Educational Assessment Center.
Quality Counts `98: Rewarding results, punishing failure. (1999, January 11). Education Week (Entire issue), 18(17).
Gaines, G. F. (1995). Linking education report cards and local school improvement. Atlanta, GA: Southern Regional Education Board.
