Center on Reinventing Public Education
Mary Beth Celio and James Harvey
January 2005
This valuable guide to using education data helps cuts through the clutter, winnow millions of numbers, and bring to the fore the information most critical to important decisions by school leaders. It recommends seven leading "indicators": achievement (in reading and math); elimination of the achievement gap; student attraction (ability to attract students); student engagement with the school; student retention/completion; teacher attraction and retention; and funding equity. Different schools might weight these differently, perhaps even replace one or another of them, but the tool - and the concept underlying it - is useful indeed. It moves beyond sole reliance on test scores while shunning management via inputs and process. It calls to mind the "balanced scorecard" approach that's become popular in business (see here or here) whereby organizations judge themselves not merely on their bottom lines but also on key factors needed for long-term financial success, like customer satisfaction and employee development. More schools should manage themselves in this fashion - and be given the freedom to do so - and those that try would be well advised to rely on this guidebook, which is user-friendly and full of examples. It's available online here.
