These districts have chosen to use a dashboard or scorecard to illustrate student performance data. They are designed to highlight and monitor indicators that they believe to be most important to ensure that the district is functioning well. Dashboard data are often presented in the form of gauges similar to those found on a car’s dashboard.
Scorecards more closely resemble the tally a golfer might keep but they focus on indicators important to district success.
Some of the dashboards in the examples below cover a variety of district success indicators: student performance, fiscal health, demographic changes, culture, etc. Others are designed specifically to track and monitor student academic performance.
MEDINAH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICT 11
Roselle, Ill. • Enr. 251 - 999
District Dashboard
This district dashboard highlights three key indicators on its homepage – reading assessment performance, math assessment performance, and district financial health – using simple gauges. Users can then click on each gauge to access state report card information for each area.
BARRINGTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Barrington, R.I. • Enr. 2,500 - 7,499
District Digital Dashboard
This district dashboard varies from the other examples in this section. The dashboard homepage points to a series of district reports. Look especially at the 2012 Report to the School Committee that uses color to indicate implementation of the district’s action plan to improve student learning and at the NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program) results, particularly pages 14-17, which illustrates the use of color to quickly indicate areas that did or did not meet established targets.
PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT OF BIRMINGHAM
Beverly Hills, Mich. • Enr. 7,500 - 14,999
District Dashboard
This is an example of a traditional district performance dashboard. In the Achievement section, the district uses bar and line graphs to illustrate the district’s performance compared to county and state results as well as information about performance of various subgroups and achievement gap data.
CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
Cedar Rapids, Iowa • Enr. 15,000+
District Dashboard
The Cedar Rapids dashboard homepage allows users to choose among several key areas of interest. Within the Academic Performance area, the district uses bar and line graphs to illustrate district performance over time on elementary assessments and comparison with state and national performance on ACT exams.
PLANO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT
Plano, Texas • Enr. 15,000+
Student Assessment and Achievement Dashboard
Plano’s dashboard homepage uses graphics and color to compare the district to a set of comparable districts. The College and Career Readiness link goes deeper into the same kind of comparisons for ACT and SAT scores along with other college and career readiness indicators.
ISSAQUAH SCHOOL DISTRICT 411
Issaquah, Wash. • Enr. 15,000+
Performance Indicators Scorecard
Issaquah is using a scorecard format to indicate its progress toward reaching certain student learning targets. By incorporating simple “green, yellow, red” color coding, they have made it easy for users to quickly see which targets are met, progressing as expected, or behind.
BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT
Boston • Enr. 15,000+
District Improvement Dashboard
Boston is using a dashboard specific to its Acceleration Agenda – a plan to improve all of its schools. Users can look at the particular improvement strategies and from there can click on status reports for the various targets within that strategy. The target reports use simple “green, yellow, red” color coding to indicate progress toward achieving each target.
LAS CRUCES PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Las Cruces, N.M. • Enr. 15,000+
Districts Statistics Report
Las Cruces uses a dashboard approach to reporting district statistics. From the homepage users have the option of reviewing various areas that impact student learning. Of special interest is the section labeled QES – a report of the results of a district-wide Quality of Education Survey.