Ever wonder how much money your local school spends on education per
student? Or how many students there are per teacher? Or how well the
students score on standardized tests?
Or how about comparing
all that information - per pupil spending, student teacher ratios,
proficiency scores - side-by-side with neighboring schools, or even
compare it with state-wide or national averages?
All this data
and millions of other education snippets now are a mouse-click away for
parents, educators and policy makers, thanks to an innovative Web site
launched March 29 by the National Education Data Partnership, a
collective of national education groups.
Created by Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services, http://www.SchoolMatters.com
contains the largest collection of public education data ever assembled
- and it's free. It includes student achievement information, financial
data and demographic breakdowns and allows users to compare this
information with other states and the nation on several indicators,
including national standardized tests, college entrance exams and
teacher salaries.
Lawmakers can compare per-pupil spending
school-by-school or state-by-state. Administrators can see teacher
salaries or benefit plans in neighboring districts. And parents can see
how many students with disabilities or English language learners attend
their local school.
The wide-ranging statistics are just the beginning, said Tom Houlihan, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers
(CCSSO), a participant in the project. The Web site also includes
analytical tools intended to quantify the student-performance return
that schools and districts get for the dollars they spend and the
demographics they serve.
"There are no easy solutions to fix the
more challenging aspects facing our (education) system," Houlihan said.
"SchoolMatters will provide the kind of advanced analytical tool that
education leaders need to help them make the very difficult decisions
they face."
This information comes at a critical time, Houlihan
said, to provide policy makers and educators with the tools and
information they need to meet the ambitious education reform goals laid
out by the states and President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.
School
principals can use the site to find schools that have similar
demographics but out-perform their own schools. From there, they can
compare similar factors, such as dollars spent per student on
instruction versus school administration. Or, they can contact a
higher-performing school directly to seek advice on teaching curricula
or professional development, and then create a plan to improve their
own school, said Tom Vander Ark, executive director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped fund the site.
"Users
can learn about creative reforms throughout the country and consider
whether similar efforts would benefit their local schools," Vander Ark
said. The Gates Foundation and The Broad Foundation,
two of the nation's largest philanthropy institutions focused
on education reform, provided $45 million to fund the project for the
next two years.
Schoolmatters.com
expands on databases S&P designed for Michigan and Pennsylvania in
2001. The idea for a nationwide Web site grew out of the financial
research firm's work for those states, and the National Education Data
Partnership was created in 2004. The other partners are the Council of
Chief State School Officers, Achieve Inc. and the CELT Corp.
CELT,
a nonprofit that provides technology and other services to schools, and
Achive, Inc., a nonprofit partnership between state governors and the
business community, will offer assistance navigating the Web site to
local and state policymakers.
Web site data is not intended to
be used to rank or rate schools or states, said William Cox, managing
director of Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services. The
information should be used to identify and fix problems that exist in
America's schools, he said.
Despite increasing per-pupil spending
by more than 75 percent in the past 25 years, Cox said, national
achievement rates have remained flat. Additionally, fewer than 1 in 3
students demonstrate proficiency in reading or math on the National Assessment of Education Progress
(NAEP) and only 68 percent of public high school students nationally
will graduate, according to a report from the Urban Institute. For
Latino and African American students, little over 50 percent finish
high school.
It's uncertain what will happen when the two years
are up and the $45 million runs out. By that time, several other
financial sources - including state school systems - may find the
database such an indispensable tool that they may help fund it, Cox
said.
The data come from public sources, including state education departments, the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics.
Currently, about 30 states have volunteered enough data to fully
populate the Web site. It will be continuously updated as states report
new data.
Send your comments on this story to letters@stateline.org. Selected reader feedback will be posted in the Letters to the editor section.
Contact Kavan Peterson at kpeterson@stateline.org
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