School districts are collecting more data than ever, but state-level issues are preventing many parents from taking advantage of this boom in educational information.

The passage of the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) changed the way that American public schools are held accountable by the federal government. By shifting the emphasis from standardized testing to a broader, more diverse set of critical performance indicators, ESSA has strived to create a fairer rubric by which to evaluate the country’s educational institutions.

In order to comply with these new standards, school districts have started collecting more data than ever before. What remains to be seen is whether this data finds its way to key educational stakeholders beyond district administrators and government authorities. As the VP of The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) Paige Kowalski points out, “Parents need this data to ensure their child has the best possible education, communities need it to advocate for changes in their schools, and policymakers need it so they know how to direct resources.”

Unfortunately, according to the DQC’s Show Me the Data 2017 report, most states continue to struggle with providing citizens — and especially parents — with meaningful information about public school performance.

Broad-based Parental Interest in School Data

As an April 2017 DQC poll makes clear, parents are well aware of the value good data can provide. 91% of parents would “use data about the performance of [a] school, such as test scores and graduation rates, to make decisions related to their child’s education.” Similarly, 89% of parents agree that “a school’s overall performance rating, like an A-F letter grade, helps them make decisions related to their child’s education.”

Despite this clear interest in school performance data, a mere 38% of public school parents “strongly agree that they have easy access to all the information they need to make sure that their child gets a great education.”

The problem, the DQC report explains, is that many state boards of education have yet to develop consistent, reliable ways of communicating critical data through their publicly available school report cards. “Without clear, understandable report cards, people are left in the dark,” Kowalski argues.

A Confusing State of Affairs

The good news is that the content of school report cards is getting progressively better. According to the DQC report, in the last round of report cards, 48 states reported student test results no older than the 2015-2016 school year. Driven in large part by ESSA, 43 states also reported a variety of nonacademic metrics — chronic absenteeism, disciplinary actions, etc. — and 28 states reported some measure of student growth, enabling stakeholders to properly understand student achievement.

This progress notwithstanding, the report laments that “the value of this timely, rich data is limited because information is often hard to find and use for a parent or community member.” Most immediately problematic, school report cards tend to be hard to navigate. Few states take the time to integrate all of their educational data into a single report. That leads to confusing outcomes like information regarding general district profiles included in a different document than information regarding student performance on statewide assessments.

What’s more, most states fail to present their data in a way that the average parent can easily understand. Introductory remarks intended to instruct parents as to how to interpret a school report card are often written on a postsecondary reading level, and are rarely translated into languages other than English. The frequent use of acronyms and industry-specific jargon also tends to turn off parents who are only trying to find the right school for their child.

Starting from the Bottom

In addition to resolving these issues, the report outlines a number of steps that states must take in order to empower parents and other lay stakeholders to get the most out of school performance data.

While all of this is important, it’s critical to remember that even the most well-organized, intuitive state report card will be of little use if the data upon which it’s based is inaccurate or incomplete. This means that school districts themselves bear a great deal of responsibility when it comes to providing parents with the information they need to make the best choices for their school-age children.

Fortunately, by using a tool like Vinson’s CheckPoint EMIS Platform, districts can rest assured that their data is organized, accurate, and easy to find. This not only facilitates more precise statewide reporting to the public, but is a key step in ensuring that school districts receive every last penny to which they’re entitled when they submit their record sets to the state Department of Education. With the help of Vinson, school districts in the state of Ohio can easily handle their own reporting needs, giving states everything they need to provide accurate, usable information to parents.