What are parents' primary concerns about the schools their children attend? Superintendents predicted that parents would be most interested in standardized test results. They couldn't have been more wrong. When asked to select from 10 categories, parents most often chose school safety, the availability of programs for students with special needs, and whether the teachers have extensive experience and hold advanced degrees.
We learned these details and a host of other information about “school report cards” through a 15-month study conducted under the sponsorship of CREATE, a federally supported research center at Western Michigan University.School report cards are public statements of the condition of individual schools and the results of their education programs. School systems prepare them at the behest of a state board of education, a state legislature, or, perhaps, a local school board or superintendent.
Two kinds of report cards dominate today. Individual report cards inform parents and the public about a single school. Compiled report cards, prepared for administrators and school boards, contain a uniform set of tables used to quickly compare statistics for a number of schools.
- What features are typical of school report cards?
- What do various audiences want to know about the condition and effectiveness of schools?
- What do school officials want the public and school boards to know about the condition and quality of schools?
- How can school report cards be organized to communicate most effectively?
- superintendents in 8 local school systems;
- 16 school board members in Guilford County, North Carolina, and Sacramento, California; and
- members of the print and video media.
Finally, we mailed questionnaires: (1) to members of the National Association of Test Directors, and (2) to Public Information Officers in the nation's 14 largest school systems and to similarly titled personnel in a sample of 14 small systems.
What Do School Report Cards Contain?
Our analysis of report cards produced 10 categories of often-reported information: Standardized Testing, Student Engagement, School Success, School Environment, Staffing and Characteristics of Teachers, Programmatic Offerings, School Facilities, Student Services, Background Characteristics of Students, and School Finances.
Among these categories, school systems most frequently report information on Standardized Testing, School Staffing and Characteristics of Teachers, Programmatic Offerings, and Background Characteristics of Students. They least frequently include data on School Success, School Environment, and Student Services.
Although the content of some of these categories is self-evident, others demand explanation. A low incidence of Student Engagement indicators—such as suspensions, expulsions, and dropout rates—would suggest high levels of engagement.
School Success indicators (other than standardized test scores) encompass such factors as graduation rates, promotion rates, number of A's awarded, special honors and awards, and athletic accomplishments. School Environment refers to statistics on crime and vandalism as well as parent involvement. Information about Student Services includes the availability to students of health and counseling services and extracurricular activities.
How to Report to the Public
As noted earlier, two of the questions we sought to answer were: What do parents and board members want to know about schools? and What do school officials want the public to know about schools?
Parents want a lot of information about the schools their children attend. In fact, if they can get it, parents want information in all 10 of the listed categories. Parents rated Student Engagement, School Success, and Background Characteristics of Students as “somewhat important.” They ranked the other seven categories as “very important.”
Budgetary constraints often force choices. When we asked parents to choose the categories they considered most important, their top three were School Environment, Programmatic Offerings, and School Staffing and Characteristics of Teachers (as previously noted).
School board members also rated all 10 categories of information as “somewhat important” or “very important.” When forced to prioritize, they chose Programmatic Offerings and Standardized Testing information as essential.
What do school officials think the public wants to know about local schools? Superintendents judged Standardized Testing to be the most important category of information to parents, followed closely by School Success. Although parents rated School Environment as most important, superintendents thought it would be least important. Superintendents did a far better job of predicting the information desires of their school board members: Programmatic Offerings and Standardized Testing data.
Report Cards That Tell the Whole Story
How should school report cards be organized to communicate most effectively? To answer this question, we conducted an experiment. We noted from our analyses of more than 500 school report cards that most were either two or four pages long. Some consisted almost entirely of tables and graphs, with little explanation, while others relied on textual passages. For a brief comparison of the two ways of conveying information about Staffing and Characteristics of Teachers, see Figure 1.
Figure 1. Examples of Two Ways to Present School Staffing Information
Narrative Format
The educational level of the staff at Susan B. Anthony Elementary School reflects its commitment to education; 65 percent of the staff hold advanced degrees, while at the district level 38 percent of the teachers have earned and advanced degree. Three-quarters of our teachers have more than five years of teaching experience in North Carolina, compared to the entire district, where 66 percent of the teachers have comparable experience.
The Other Kind of Report Card: When Schools Are Graded-table
Tabular Format | ||
|---|---|---|
| School | District | |
| Average Number of Students per Teacher | 18 | 23 |
| Percent of Teachers with Advanced Degrees | 65% | 38% |
| Years of Teaching Experience within the State of North Carolina | ||
| Percent of Teachers | ||
| Years of Experience | School | District |
| 0-2 | 5 | 9 |
| 3-5 | 20 | 24 |
| 6-10 | 36 | 25 |
| 11-20 | 35 | 31 |
| 20+ | 35 | 10 |
We suspected that parents might prefer verbal explanations, without the need to dredge information out of lengthy tables, but that school officials might prefer tables and graphs. To test these suppositions, we interviewed parents and school board members and superintendents.
- “good” schools, which received favorable scores on all indicators—such as high test scores, a low dropout rate, and a high attendance rate;
- “consistently mediocre” schools, which received scores that were middling on all indicators—neither as high as those received by good schools nor as low as those received by poor schools;
- “inconsistently mediocre” schools, which received favorable scores on some indicators and unfavorable scores on others; or
- “poor” schools, which received unfavorable scores on all indicators.
What did our interviews with parents reveal? We contacted 12 parents with children enrolled in the Greensboro, North Carolina, public schools. Each had received four report cards—from one school in each category of quality. We wanted to know which characteristics parents most preferred, and whether the format and length of the report card would influence their ability to identify the quality of the school represented. Parents preferred the long designs over the short ones by a ratio of two to one. Those who preferred the long tabular design tended to select the long narrative design for their second choice. Thus, length, rather than narrative versus tabular format, appeared to be a key factor. In selecting their first and second choices, parents typically cited the greater amount of information as a reason for their selections. By a slight —, parents preferred the tabular over the narrative format.
We also wanted to determine whether the format of the report cards influenced parents' ability to identify the quality of the schools represented. Parents were correct 77 percent of the time, but they were most successful when responding to the long narrative report card design (91 percent accurate). Use of short narrative report cards reduced parents' accuracy to 66 percent. The other two designs resulted in middling accuracy (75 percent). Parents tended to overestimate school quality when they were inaccurate.
We conducted similar experiments by interviewing school board members and superintendents. School board members in a Piedmont, North Carolina, county and in Sacramento, California, overwhelmingly preferred long report cards in tabular format. Superintendents preferred long to short report cards and, by a slight —, the tabular format.
When asked to classify schools in terms of quality, members of both school boards did best with the long report cards, but were inconsistent in terms of format. The North Carolina board was 80 percent accurate when responding to the long tabular format, but less accurate with every other combination of length and format. The Sacramento board was 100 percent accurate using the long narrative or short tabular formats, but far less accurate (67 percent) when responding to the other combinations. Superintendents did equally well with the long narrative format and the short tabular format (75 percent accuracy), but worse with the other formats.
Guidelines for Effective Report Cards
- When financial resources permit, include information on all 10 content categories listed here in school report cards intended for parents and school board members.
- In school report cards for parents, when financial resources are constrained, include information about (1) School Environment, such as statistics on school safety and the extent of parental and community involvement; (2) Programmatic Offerings, such as special education courses and magnet school programs; and (3) School Staffing and Characteristics of Teachers, such as average class size and the numbers of teachers who hold advanced degrees.
- In report cards for school board members, include information about Standardized Testing and Programmatic Offerings.
- Display indicators of school quality in the context of historical values for the school, preferably over a three-year time span or longer. (School board members expressed strong preference for historical data.)
- Display current indicators of quality in the context of averages for the district containing the school, and other reference values, such as state averages. (School board members expressed strong preference for such comparisons.)
- Prepare school report cards that are at least four pages in length, in order to contain sufficient information that parents and school board members consider important.
- If the same report cards are provided for parents and school board members, include a mixture of tabular and graphical presentation formats coupled with narrative statements of principal results.
- If separate report cards are prepared for board members, report information in appropriate tables and graphs, including limited narration.
- If separate report cards are furnished for parents, use a narrative format with limited tables and graphs.
The earliest school report cards in the United States were prepared for school administrators around the turn of the century. A renaissance in their preparation began in 1969 with the Columbus School Profile: A Report of the Columbus Public Schools to the Community. Today many districts use school report cards; some states even mandate them. If designed effectively, such reports can inform parents about the effectiveness of their children's schools and let the public know what is right about local schools and what needs improvement.
