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January 15, 2002
Accountability: Meeting The Challenge With Technology (con'td)
Talking to the Public
The central tenet of educational accountability is the idea that schools have a responsibility to share information on student progress and efforts at school improvement with parents and other stakeholders. In many states and districts, this is being done through "school report cards"-both online and off.
Some states mandate such report cards and the data they must cover. For example, California has drawn up a comprehensive set of guidelines for School Accountability Report Cards. The state promises to provide Local Education Agencies with an electronic template containing much of the data; the district will be required to fill in the rest. A number of other states take a similar approach to district-by-district reporting. For those that do not, some national organizations (see directory) are attempting to provide similar structures for informing the public.
One of the interesting challenges that arises when attempting to provide a snapshot view of how a school or district measures up is the question of fair comparison. Without some clear frames of reference and methods of comparison, there is a great deal of room for misunderstanding. The following suggestions, gleaned from the Just for the Kids Web site, focus on some of the criteria for fair school comparisons:
- To be fair, schools should be compared with others that educate equally or more challenging student populations-in terms of special education or limited English proficiency, for example.
- Schools should not be compared unfavorably with other schools who achieve higher scores by testing a smaller percentage of their students; it is important to know what percentage of students was not tested and why.
- Comparisons between schools in different states need to take into account the different assessment measures. For example, comparing the National Assessment of Educational Progress basic and proficiency standards to the standards on Texas state tests, Just for the Kids found that the state's passing standard is comparable to the NAEP basic standard but easier than the NAEP proficiency standard.
A number of schools and districts have developed their own methods for making such comparisons. The Western States Benchmarking Consortium, for example, involves educators from seven suburban school districts in the western United States who are convinced that benchmarking their performance against other schools with comparable resources, teaching philosophies, and student backgrounds is the best way to drive improvement. Administrators from the schools communicate regularly-at face-to-face meetings and via e-mail-to share suggestions, resources, and accountability expertise.
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