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Data-Driven Decision Making and School Report Cards

NEA Student Achievement Team

January 2001

What are school report cards?

School report cards are reports issued by a school and/or district that present data and information about the status of the school. School report cards are becoming a major tool in the move to make schools more accountable to the public and policymakers. Supporting assumptions that underlie the use of school report cards suggest they will: inspire low performers to improve, provide for greater accountability, improve public confidence in schools, improve communication with parents and community involvement, and provide greater clarity of school goals. Meanwhile, critics of school report cards respond that: test scores are overemphasized, schools do not fit a one-size fits all model, school comparisons are unfair, and schools with low performance are negatively impacted.
Brown, R.S. 1999. "Creating school accountability reports." (AASAOnline School Administrator has more publications.)

School report cards vary tremendously across the states. A review of a sample of school report cards by the KSA-Plus Communications group found many do not present a clear message and the audience for the reports is often unclear. Ed Week has published a full discussion of these issues.

What kinds of data are included on school report cards?

Chief among the data that are published is student achievement test scores on state standardized tests. Some states mandate that student achievement test scores are the only piece of information that is published. Other states allow local discretion to add data on other school processes that affect student achievement. Types of data that may be applicable to include in school report cards are outcome data and data on the school processes that affect those outcomes. Be leery of including data on non alterable variables such as parent income. Examples of outcome data include student achievement test scores, attendance rates, dropout rates, and promotion and graduation rates. Examples of school processes that affect outcomes include per-pupil expenditures, class size, teacher certification and qualifications, teaching loads, instructional materials, discipline and school safety, school facilities, professional development opportunities, curriculum and instructional practices, school leadership, and special services for students. For a fuller discussion of data on school report cards see Ten Recommendations for Reporting Data to the Public at Ed Week.

Why are school report cards important?

The 2000 edition of Quality Counts from Education Week reports that 45 states are using school/district report cards in their accountability efforts. Currently, only 27 states officially rank schools based upon report cards. Many schools, either through choice or through legislative accountability mandates, have begun publishing school reports in recent years. Due to this prevalence of school report cards and the Bush administration's proposals to make them mandatory for all schools, an Association focus on the development of effective school report cards is appropriate. Local NEA affiliates need to get involved to ensure the information presented is balanced and fair and to make the information useful for ongoing school improvement activities.

How are school report cards and data-driven decision making related?

A focus on school report cards offers an immediate and tangible activity for educators and the local affiliate to become involved in accountability and data driven decision making. In order to produce school report cards, a significant investment must be made at the school level to collect and analyze a large amount of data. Since this process is also the core of data-driven decision making, involvement in school report cards will initiate data-driven decision making for a school. Local affiliates and members can provide guidance on all phases of data collection and analysis in order to make the data and information on the school report card useful for school improvement and advocacy by the local affiliate.

Where can I find examples of school report cards?

Sample school report cards are easily obtainable. The following three sources are suggested.

See Ed Week (PDF, 2 pages) for a sample report card prepared by a KSA-Plus Communications consulting group.

Check with your district office or your state's department of education web site to see if your state has a prescribed format. Most states are putting district performance reports online with links to individual school data reports.

Enter school report cards into your Internet search engine and a host of school sites from across the country will appear. Surf those results for samples.

Also see Reporting Results: What the Public Wants to Know   (PDF, 20 pages).

How can the local affiliate use school report cards?

Three uses are primary for the local affiliate. School reports cards can be an avenue to promote public support for public education, a vital tool for school improvement, and a source of data and information for advocacy.

The public reporting of school progress can become a means of communication with the community to build public support and confidence. The data in the report can also become information upon which the school and the community can enter into common agenda building activities toward school improvement. The release of data should be accompanied by teacher interpretation of the scores and other supporting information and activities that will engage parents and the community. In order to accomplish this change in perspective, educators should increasingly view themselves in charge of the data and communications about their school.

The data and information collected and analyzed to develop the report cards can be the same information that is used in data-driven decision making, the basis for effective school improvement activities and plans. Collecting and using data from multiple sources using a variety of data collection techniques will allow a more complete picture of a school's strengths and needs. Data on the conditions of teaching and learning and other variables that impact student achievement not only allows a school to make targeted decisions about improvement, but allow the consumers of the report cards to understand the complexities of the schooling process. For a discussion of using school reports cards in school improvement see Gaines, G.F. and L.M. Cornett. 1992. School accountability reports: Lessons learned in SREB states. Atlanta: Southern Regional Educational Board.

Local affiliates can use the data from school report cards in their advocacy on such issues as equalization of resources, staffing, teaching loads, and other areas of concern with boards of education and state and local policymakers. Arguments supported by data are usually more powerful than arguments supported by perceptions (Data-driven Decisionmaking and Association Advocacy.)

In some states, Association affiliates have been able to cooperate with policymakers to agree upon the types of data and information to be included on school report cards. In other states, negative agendas for the report cards have been clear and Association efforts at involvement have been stymied. In the latter cases, some affiliates have decided to move forward with producing their own report cards on schools in order to provide balanced and fair data to combat the negative practice of using only student achievement test scores as a school evaluation method.

Two issues about local affiliate involvement in school report cards should be mentioned. First, educators will be accused of making excuses for any low achievement or weaknesses. Second, if data are collected systematically on each school in a particular district, the data may show that some schools are more effective in terms of student achievement than others with similar characteristics, moving the discussion from school effectiveness to school efficiency. Be aware that school report cards are being used in marketing communities as good places to live, real estate advertisements, and, most recently, in child custody cases.