School Data at Your Fingertips
By Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2004
Has your local school been goofing off lately? Or does it deserve high marks on its report card? The School Information Partnership's (SIP) Web site (www.SchoolResults.org) tackles those questions by providing information on the academic performance of schools that would take most folks days to gather.
"We're doing the legwork for the public," says Jackie Laine, director of public affairs for Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services, a contributor to the site.
Launched in the wake of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), SIP aims to equip parents, educators, and communities with report cards that evaluate their local schools. NCLB, the federal education mandate, requires that student academic performance be publicly reported. Taxpayers can keep tabs on whether their school district is performing above par, for instance, while parents can use it to find a good school system for their children.
"This is a comprehensive resource that people who come into the library can use," says Kia Brown, a community outreach worker at Standard & Poor's. SIP is a joint product of Standard & Poor's and the National Center for Educational Accountability's Just for the Kids, and is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Broad Foundation, a philanthropic organization.
The site is still a work in progress, with information expected to be added throughout 2004. But as of September, it provides snapshot data on the academic performance of elementary, middle, and high schools in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.
It's all public information, but presented in a user-friendly format and easily accessible online. Data includes math and reading scores for 4th- and 8th-grade students, plus Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reports.
Users simply click on a state from the home-page map to search for information by school, district, or state. After entering the name of your school and clicking on the search button, an array of information will pop up, including how many children are Title I eligible and the percentage of a school's teachers holding master's degrees.
Next year, SIP will be expanded to include information on school expenditures, revenue data, enrollment, and more academic information that's not required by NCLB.
