If you write LCAPs or SPSAs, if you defend your school’s or district’s reputation, if you speak with staff about school or district strengths or challenges, if you speak to community members, you need evidence that’s both solid and easy to communicate. The Assessment and Planning Explorers meet the test. Comparability with schools or districts like yours provide essential context to show your system’s impact on students. Visual methods enable people uncomfortable with data to think with their eyes.
Your district is awash in data. But the evidence about your schools’ or district’s performance that the California Dept. of Education hands you is their Dashboard. Given the lack of a growth measure in the Dashboard, and given its deeply embedded flaws, you need your own base of evidence to really know how you’re doing. To learn more about the Dashboard’s flaws, take a look at these blog posts about the mismeasurement that’s baked into its logic rules and calculation methods.
If you believe that meaningful interpretation means comparing your schools and district to others whose students are highly similar to your own, then these visual tools will serve you well.
