Links to school profiles, report cards

If you're investigating school districts -- whether in west-central Illinois or anywhere else in the state -- you might want to visit some websites that compile school performance data.

Start by going here, where you can read a letter from our governor. The letter gives you overview of how the state organizes school district information, then provides you with two links.

The first, the Illinois School Profile, gives you just the highlights of a school -- the attendance rate, average class size, and district spending. You can also determine whether the school has been making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the guidelines set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act.

But if you want even more exhaustive analysis of a school -- and the link mentioned above doesn't satisfy you -- you can also check out the more thorough Report Cards. There, you can do extensive quantitative analysis of how students performed in different subject areas, as well as within different ethnic and socio-economic groups. (Call me cynical, but I have deep concerns about this ethnic and socio-economic data being included, largely because I think the people who care about this information the most are the same people most likely to exploit it for their own benefit.)

Just as universities don't use ACT scores as the sole measurements for deciding whether students should be admitted, parents shouldn't use these profiles and reports as the only means of choosing a school. The information in the reports gives a lot of data, but there's a lot missing, too. What about student evaluations of teachers, for example? Or feedback from parents? Or (best of all) how about some comments by veteran teachers, the sort forming the nucleus of any school's teaching staff, who have the best historical understanding of where the district's been and where it's headed?

Of course, you can't put some of that stuff down in numbers form, the way the profiles and reports do. But that's what I'd like to see, at least to complement the data already there. End of rant.