THE CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE, INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL REPORT CARDS (APRIL 2001).
Most states currently produce annual school “report cards” or school profiles. These report cards can provide parents with a range of data on their children’s schools. Most report cards are published on the state education agency (SEA) website, and many states require them to be sent home to parents or printed in local newspapers.
But we are missing an opportunity with these reports: while most states produce some form of report card, 13 states do not. And even those states who do provide individual school profiles fail to include important data – much of which is already collected at the state or local level – that could could make the profiles more useful for parents as well as administrators.
For more information visit The Center for Community Change .
JOE NATHAN AND NICOLA JOHNSON, CENTER FOR SCHOOL CHANGE, WHAT SHOULD WE DO? A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO ASSESSMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN SCHOOLS (December 2000).
This report shows how families and schools can have a more accurate picture of student achievement. The report also presents a model program of academic accountability for each of the nation's public schools. This two-year, federally funded project involved 21 schools from 12 states. It is one of the first national projects which convened charter public schools and district-run schools to learn from one another.
The authors recommend that each school have an explicit contract for improving student achievement between itself and either a local school board or other supervising organization (such as the state, a university or other entity). The project suggests six vital and three valuable features for each accountability contract. The report describes how schools have used these components to help produce clear, measurable improvements in student achievement.
