|
Leaders must prioritize publishing the information that families and communities need and deserve on their report cards. And there is no finish line for this work. State leaders must continuously evaluate whether the tool they have created is meeting the needs of their audiences and providing clear, understandable information about school quality and student progress.
For a fourth year, DQC examined report cards from all 50 states and the District of Columbia to see how well state leaders are using their most public-facing resource to empower the public with quality information. While the review was conducted in January 2020, DQC made the decision to postpone the release of this year’s review as the pandemic began and leaders nationwide were rightfully focused elsewhere.
This year’s review uncovered the following positive trends:
- 43 states report student growth data on their report cards this year, up from 39 the previous year.
- 35 states include postsecondary enrollment data, up from 24 the previous year.
- 25 states include career and technical education enrollment or completion data, up from 16 the previous year.
- 13 states include teacher demographic data, up from 11 the previous year.
However, state leaders should prioritize improving their report cards in the following ways:
- 26 states are still missing at least one required student group in their displays of disaggregated student achievement data—although this number is a significant decrease from previous years.
- While every state includes graduation rate data, 25 states do not include that information broken out by all of the federally required student groups.
- 25 states do not include all the required information about teacher experiences, such as information about whether teachers are inexperienced or do not have required credentials.
- Just 25 states provide the option to translate their report card into a language other than English.
- While most states publish per-pupil expenditure data, the majority of states are still working to fulfill the new requirement in ways that are meaningful and actionable to communities.
State report cards should provide parents and the public with meaningful information about students and schools. But when this resource is missing data, hard to find, or difficult to understand, families and communities are left in the dark.
Read DQC’s 2020 Show Me the Data report to learn more about the progress states have made to provide meaningful, easy-to-understand information to families through their report cards and the areas where leaders still have more work to do.
|
|
|
|
