Empowering Parents With The Information They Need—School Report Cards
The movie "Won't Back Down" has gotten people across the country talking about what we can do to give parents more options when it comes to their kids' education.
There are many ways that districts and states can empower parents – "Won't Back Down" highlights one policy, parent trigger, that allows parents to petition to turn around their kids' failing schools.
If we want to get parents truly involved, however, we need to give them more information. Parents need to understand what's happening at their children's schools and how well they are learning. That's why StudentsFirst advocates for empowering parents with school report cards. Annual school report cards provide parents with information about how their kids' schools are performing in an easy-to-understand format, just like a student's academic report card. With school report cards, each school and district receives an A-F letter grade based on how well they are educating their students. School report cards can look at a variety of factors, such as student achievement and growth, achievement gaps among different groups of students, graduation and matriculation rates, and attendance. States such as Florida and Indiana have already started issuing school report cards.
Knowledge is power – the information included in school report cards will help give parents the information they need to be strong advocates for their kids and to make informed choices about schools.
To learn more about school report cards, see "Empowering Parents with Data: School Report Cards" below (or you can download it here).
Topics: Empower Parents