TRANSPARENCY POLICIES

15. Disclosing School Performance to Improve Public Education

Many states enacted school report card requirements in the mid-1980s as concern about the inadequacies of public education mounted.204 In 1983 A Nation at Risk, a report commissioned by President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education, Terrell Bell, warned that American public education often was mediocre compared to that of other countries.205 In a study of students’ performance in twenty-two countries, U.S. students placed twelfth. SAT scores, too, had declined in the 1960s and early 1970s. Press coverage of discipline and drug problems also suggested the need for better school accountability. Education was the largest single item in most state budgets, and candidates featured education issues prominently in state election campaigns in the 1980s.

State and local officials saw school report cards as one way to provide parents with greater choice and to put pressure on school administrators to improve performance. Report cards could work in tandem with other novel approaches that states were experimenting with—vouchers to pay for private schools, charter schools, and performance contracting, a formof financing that allowed schools to design educational programs and secure resources in exchange for agreements to achieve certain performance outcomes.

Report cards could reward schools for meeting their performance targets.206 In an effort to spread the innovative practices of a few states, Congress required in 1994 that all states establish school performance standards and test students to assess whether theymet these standards.207 Congress also required educational agencies receiving funding under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to “publicize and disseminate to teachers and other staff, parents, students, and the community” the results of annual performance reviews.208

The content, presentation, and means of disseminating information in school report cards continued to vary widely from state to state, however. According to a national study by Education Week in 1999, only thirty-six states published regular report cards on individual schools.209 Most presented information on schools’ past test scores and on state averages. Reporting on other aspects of performance—school safety, class size, and faculty qualifications—was less common. Only a quarter of the states with report cards presented information that allowed comparisons among test scores of schools with similar student demographics. Some states distributed school report cards to students, while most made them available on the Internet.

One major problem was the lack of consensus about the kinds of data that school report cards should contain to measure performance. Surveys conducted in 1998 found that parents and educators sometimes had quite different views regarding important content, and that existing school report cards did not always contain information that both regarded as very important. Educators were more likely to want demographic and disaggregated data, while some parents were concerned that such data would be divisive. Only about a third of those polled thought that schools should be judged principally on student achievement on standardized tests. Most regarded indicators of teacher quality and school climate as among the critical data to include.210

In addition, some early research suggested that surprisingly few parents and educators made use of report card information. Research by Public Agenda conducted in 1999 found that only 52 percent of teachers and 31 percent of parents had seen a school report card.211 In 2001, the George W. Bush administration championed the No Child Left Behind Act as a centerpiece of public eduction reform. Among other provisions, the law required school districts that received federal assistance for disadvantaged students under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Eduction Act to publish report cards for each of its schools.212

The new federal requirements demanded disclosure of more information than was commonly published by districts at that time. School report cards had to disclose students’ achievement on state tests and disaggregate test scores by race, disability status, and English proficiency. They also had to disclose teacher qualifications and show trends in achievement, dropout rates, graduation rates, and percentages of students not tested.213 The quality of school report cards has increased substantially since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, although report cards still fall short of full compliance.214 By 2004, all fifty states provided school report cards and forty-four states disaggregated student achievement data by race and disability as required by 2001 law. However, only fourteen states disaggregated graduation data and provided information regarding the number and percentage of “highly qualified” teachers as required by the law.

At the same time, multiple federal and state reporting requirements created confusion. In 2004, nineteen states had more than one report card per school and sixteen states created special report cards to comply with the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law.215

One careful study of state-level student performance in 2004 found that the incentives and sanctions associated with accountability systems in education reform had a significant and positive impact on test scores but that school report cards alone had no independent statistically significant effect.216 In 2006, it was still too early to determine whether school report cards would improve over time and whether they would create incentives for better public education.

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FOOTNOTES
204. Performance-based accountability was initiated at the state level and was launched in the mid-1980s by the National Governors Association, headed by Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas. Many of the early systems were intended to provide schools with more flexibility in setting educational policies in exchange for accountability for resulting performance.
205. A detailed description of ANation at Risk is offered in Kearns andHarvey, 2000. pp. 22–28.
206. Gormley and Weimer, 1999, p. 43.
207. Gorman, 2002, p. 40.
208. See Improving America’s School’s Act of 1994, Pub. L. 103–382, October 20, 1994, 108 Stat. 3518 (codified as amended at 20 U.S.C. §§6301 et seq. (2000)). This law reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Pub. L. 89–10, April 11, 1965, 79 Stat. 27 (codified as amended at 20 U.S.C. §§6301 et seq. (Supp. III 2003)). The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act requires the education agencies receiving funds under §1116 of Pub. L. 107–110 to “publicize and disseminate the results of the local annual review . . . to parents, teachers, principals, schools, and the community so that the teachers, principals, other staff, and schools can continually refine, in an instructionally useful manner, the program of instruction to help all children served under this part meet the challenging State student academic achievement standards established under section 1111(b)(1).” No Child Left Behind Act, Pub. L. 107–110, §1116(a)(1)(C). This section can be found in the United States Code at 20 U.S.C. §6316(a)(1)(C).
209. Lynn Olson, “Report Cards for Schools” Education Week, Vol. 18, No. 17, January 11, 1999.
210. Accountability for Public Schools: Developing School Report Cards, Findings of Group Research for EducationWeek, December 1998. Belden Russonello & Stewart, R/S/M, A-Plus Communications.
211. Public Agenda, 2000.
212. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. 107–110, January 8, 2002, 115 Stat. 1421 (codified as amended at 20 U.S.C. §§6052 et seq., §§1041 et seq., §3427 (Supp. III 2003). School report card requirements are contained in Title I, Part A, §1111.
213. Erin Fox, “Report Cards Provide More, or Less, Data,” Education Week, Vol. 24, No. 15, December 8, 2004; Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2002.
214. Fox, “Report Cards Provide More, or Less, Data.”
215. Fox, “Report Cards Provide More, or Less, Data.”
216. Hanushek and Raymond, 2004.
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