Creating School Accountability Reports

School Administrator, Nov, 1999 by Richard S. Brown

Desireable Indicators

When developing an accountability report card, focus on those measures that are under the school's control. No single indicator, including SAT9 test scores or ITBS test scores, is sufficient to measure all things or serve all purposes. Provide demographic data as a context only, not to be used as an excuse for poor performance on those measures that are under the school's control.

At the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, we've looked at hundreds of different report card representations and have seen a variety of features. Some are as limited and primitive as a typewritten page or two of data with some explanatory language thrown in. Others, showing evidence of professional typesetting and design, offer 16 to 18 pages of data for a given school.

However, most parents and members of the public won't read a school report of a dozen or more pages. People tend to want something brief but informative, with access o additional information as needed.

Typically, school report card data is presented in table formats with some explanatory text accompanying and maybe some comparison information, such as district averages or the previous year's performance. The few graphical representations consist of bar charts or trend lines.

When images are used, they typically relate to a single indicator, failing to present graphically the multivariate nature of the school. That is, there is generally an image for one indicator, another image for other indicators, and so forth. Th collection of information for a school is not presented in a holistic way.

In our examination of accountability report cards, we found that presenting the information in a more holistic way (see below article) could convey a great deal of information about a school in less space without losing clarity.

An appealing aspect of Connecticut's Strategic School Profile allows for school officials to write a fairly lengthy narrative for the school. Unfortunately, of the nearly 80 we sampled covering the 19961997 school year, only four wrote anything. The rest were empty. The opportunity was there to display information about the school that the reader otherwise wouldn't know, but school leaders did not take advantage.

Key Considerations

When you decide to craft an accountability report card for your schools or district, there are several important considerations:

* Define the audience.

For whom are the report cards intended? Educators and the public do not always agree on what information is important or how it should be represented. What is the purpose of the report card? This helps to determine what you should include and how you are going to represent it. Although a school report may serve multiple purposes, no single report card can serve all purposes or constituents. It is best to avoid trying to do so.

* Be clear about the purpose.

Is the report card intended for accountability or accounting? There is a difference. If its purpose is accountability, it should be more action focused. You want to say, "Here is where this school is now and this is the action we plan to take to get to where we want to be." This differs from accounting, where you're just stating the numbers.