A New Online Tool for Parents to Evaluate Schools
MarylandCAN (the Maryland Campaign for Achievement Now) is proud to announce a new online tool: MarylandCAN’s online School and District Report Cards. Our report cards provide Maryland families with detailed information about all 1,400 public schools in our state based on the academic achievement of their students.
Click here to see how your school stacks up against others in the state.
Because this is our first year releasing online report cards, we’re treating it as a pilot year. Starting in 2013, we’ll assign letter grades to every public school and district in Maryland. But before we do that, we want to hear from you about how well you think our report cards reflect what’s happening inside our public schools. Feel free to get in touch with us to share your thoughts and feedback on our methodology.
Every parent deserves to know how well their child’s public school is meeting the needs of its students. By pinpointing exactly where the achievement gap lives, we will equip every Marylander—parents and non-parents alike—with the information they need to serve as effective advocates for kids.
Clay Gump
9:32 am on Thursday, March 8, 2012
Meh, I'm not that impressed. This doesn't seem any better than other tools already out there such a www.greatschools.org or www.schooldigger.com or www.mdreportcard.org/
MarylandCAN
8:04 am on Friday, March 9, 2012
Clay, thanks for sharing your comment. What makes our online tool different is that it also highlights the achievement gap for each school. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Maryland has the second largest disparity in the country between the academic performance of low-income students and their wealthier peers in eighth-grade math. We have the fourth largest gap in eighth-grade reading. We wanted to highlight the achievement gaps in schools so that, as a state, we can work towards closing them.
M. Hermanson
11:18 am on Wednesday, March 14, 2012
I was just talking to my 11 year old son about why doctors need to treat the cause and not the symptom. I want to see the achievement gap closed, but I feel we need to make sure we use our data wisely and use measurements which can help us find correct solutions. There is much research (and many recent articles) to show that economic standing of a family and the mother's education level are highly reliable indicators to predicting success in school. Talking about the achievement gap without controlling for these factors doesn't tell you if the gap exists (at that school) outside of the social economic factors. I think a really good measure of a school would be the percent of low-income children who score ADVANCED on the MSAs. Highlighting this statistic would show schools which aim for high academic achievement and which help students overcome the limitations of poverty.