BOISE, Idaho — When it comes to finding out how each school in Idaho is performing, the data can be hard to decipher. On Wednesday, the Idaho State Department of Education unveiled a new K-12 Report Card that is now making understanding that information easier.
“Our old site, it was very difficult to navigate, it was difficult to look at schools side by side, or make sense of data and there was very little comparative info and absolutely no context for what we were displaying,” said Karlynn Laraway, director of assessment and accountability for the State Department of Education.
The Education department has been working to revamp the report card since January.
“We want to make this accessible to everyone so by providing this in a way that is easily understood,” Laraway said. “We simply present the information in a non-biased way and let folks decide what's important to them.”
The website breaks down a school’s enrollment numbers, participation rates, proficiency rates, as well as the statewide targets and school’s percentile rank. It does not assign schools with letter grades though.
“I think schools are so much more than just achievement and measures of student achievement are one component of school performance, but schools do amazing things every day for students that can’t be captured if we just put an 'A' at the top of the report card and people skipped over any school that wasn’t that,” Laraway said.
The new report card also presents more information than ever before, but because of student privacy rules, some information is still unavailable.
“This new report card allows us to give as much information about a school as we're legally able to do and I think that's really powerful,” Laraway said.
Funding to implement the site was obtained through a grant.