For years, schools have tended to approach budgets with some basic assumptions and aspirations and general wish lists but with scant data to drive the budget conversation. Suppose there were a better way? What if the conversation started with a review of the last five to ten years of data on three key mission- and strategy-driven indicators:…

Government scrutiny and intensified oversight have dramatically changed the landscape of education in recent years. Observers want to know how schools compare, which district is best, which states are spending the most per student on education, whether reforms are making a difference, and why so many students are failing. Some of these questions…

One of the US Department of Education's key priorities is turning around the nation's persistently low-achieving schools, yet exactly how to identify low-performing schools is a task left to state policy makers, and a myriad of definitions have been utilized. In addition, exactly how to recognize when a school begins to turn around is not well…

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act required states to report graduation rates as a condition of high school accountability for receipt and use of federal Title I funds, and to set growth targets that would ensure all students graduate from high school. It also reaffirmed the long-standing national policy that graduation rates be used as the…

Criticism directed at the quality of UNESCO's education statistics led to the recent restructuring of the Organization's statistical services. This criticism, primarily supported by the World Bank and subsequently confirmed by consultants engaged by UNESCO, does not prove to be completely justified. In fact, a change in the political orientation…

As part of an effort to improve Springfield (Massachusetts) public schools, School Centered Decision Making Teams (SCDMT) have been created at each school. To help the SCDMTs produce more meaningful and useful School Improvement Plans (SIPs), the school system has been working to produce a profile for each school. The availability of profiles was…