PLEASE NOTE: Some of this post is 110% my opinion. If you don't like my opinions, please spare yourself a rise in blood pressure and read something else. I hear the weather channel can be riveting. Since this is a "read at your own risk" kind of post, I have included a "jump break" so that you have to click "read more" in order to read the rest of it. I know, it annoys me, too.
I got a comment telling me that there are reports for each individual school on the state's website. Thank you, Jessica! I did a quick search and guess what I found? School report cards! The most recent info is for the 2010-2011 school year. You can find the reports in the School Report Cards Archives on the KDE website. I will be anxiously awaiting the 2011-2012 reports!
The reports are in PDF format so you'll probably have to have Adobe Reader to view them. That means you probably can't access them from your smart phone. A box popped up when I clicked the "PDF" for each school and I chose to "open" the file and it worked fine on my computer.
The report cards have a lot of great information for each school. At least 15 pages of information to be exact. But, I wanted a side by side comparison of our elementary schools. I wanted to know how my kids school compares with other schools in our county. So I made a spread sheet! And I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy!
First, I was surprised to see that Hanson has the highest enrollment, and from what I know, it's an older school. Don't know why, but that surprised me.
Second, I was really surprised to see that three out of eight schools failed to make "adequate yearly progress". That just doesn't sound good.
Third, Title I has something to do with income and all of our schools are Title I. I'm going to have to do some more reading about that.
Forth, it looks really good to see 0% for all but one school in the "retention rate" column. However, I just have to ask, how is that possible? There were ZERO students that needed to repeat a grade in 7 out of 8 schools? Really? You've got three schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress and NO students needed to be retained? Really? I'd like to know what percentage of our high school seniors are able to read at the 12th grade level.
Fifth, yikes, I don't want to think about "school safety violations" because there were violations at two schools in the 2010-2011 school year. I personally feel like there should be a viewable report about the incident including the actions taken by the school.
Sixth, okay, I think there has to be a typo in the reports for "spending per student." I can't see how Hanson has the most students and spent far less money per student. I'd also like to see how each school spent that money and where the money came from. Wouldn't you?
Seventh, I didn't look too closely at the student to teacher ratio. It seems to correspond with the student enrollment. I'd rather have seen a break down of teachers and students in each grade level. I'm sure there's a report out there somewhere.....
Eighth, let's look at the extracurricular activities for each school. Now, the number in my chart is based on the info in the report cards. But, keep in mind that the number is not 100% accurate. It really comes down to how the person writing the report worded it. If you're the person preparing these reports for your school, keep in mind that size does matter. But, I still think those numbers speak volumes about how each of our public schools operate independently of one another. I have to ask who's responsible for the extracurriculars? Teachers? Parents? Administrators?
Now, this could be my favorite part of the report cards: Parent Involvement. I included the student enrollment for easy reference when you look at the attendance for teacher conferences. I should have did more highlighting, sorry.
I don't know what they are doing out a Jesse Stuart to get parents involved, but they should host seminars for the other schools in the county. I do question the number of parents serving on the Site Based Council at Jesse. That's a lot of parents. I invite you to look at the Site Based Council page on the board of ed's website. It doesn't seem to have been updated since the 2009-2010 school year. Who's in charge of this stuff? And, yeah, I spelled council wrong.
I just have to say the voting in Site Based elections is just plain disappointing. Parents, it is important to vote. The people on your schools Site Based Committee affect things from dress code to class size. Get out and vote! If you don't know, Site Based meetings are open to the public, you can request to address the council, and the meetings are supposed to be advertised in the paper to let you know that your school is having a meeting. Does anyone know if this happens? I don't get the newspaper. I think the Site Based meetings should be included on our school calendar. If nothing else, the meetings should be included on the schools website calendar. Those calendars are devoid of information, someone really should spend more time updating them.
Last but certainly not least, volunteer hours. I am not a math genius, but I have to challenge the validity of some of those numbers. I pulled up the 2012-2013 school calendar and can easily see that there are 175 Instructional Days for the upcoming school year. I'm just guessing that this is about average from year to year. Assuming that most of our schools operate from 8-3, kids spend about seven hours a day at school. Seven hours a day for 175 days in a school year equals 1,225 hours of instruction time. Those four schools listing greater than 1,000 hours, I want to see your record books. Maybe some of these volunteer hours are for college students needing to volunteer in a school? Maybe student teachers? Do you think the schools are using the parent sign-in sheets to calculate these numbers? KDE, if you're reading this, contact each school and request a copy of the volunteer registry. The category simply says "volunteer hours" so that could be viewed a million different ways. Those numbers aren't impossible, but I'd still like a little more evidence to support them.
So, in conclusion, what does all of this mean? First, let me just thank you for reading all the way to the end! This is a pretty lengthy blog post. If nothing else, I hope that you take the time to review the information available about your school and start asking questions about how things are being done. Your children will thank you. Your school might not, but you can't let that stop you. I read (see my next blog post) that our community does not value education. It's time to change that, don't you think?
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