The Problem
Missouri parents don’t have access to accurate and easy-to-understand information about the quality of their children’s schools.
The Solution
Mandate the creation of transparent online school report cards (with an easy-to-interpret rating system, such as letter grades) that clearly communicate measures of school quality to parents and community members.
Key Facts
- The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires every state to publish report cards on schools and districts. High-quality school report cards help parents make informed choices and help states prioritize schools for academic improvement interventions.
- The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has no rating system for schools or districts, and the information it shares is not provided in a way that is useful to parents or policymakers.
Parents Are Being Kept in the Dark
When done well, school report cards are a powerful tool for communicating school performance to parents. According to a 2019 Phi Delta Kappa survey, 66% of parents who are aware of school report cards read them, and of those, 82% find them useful.
Federal law requires the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to produce report cards for every school and district in the state. While DESE has technically met this requirement, the current report cards are not useful. They provide a lot of data, but they do not label the data clearly or give context in which to understand the data.
What Missouri needs are clear, parent-friendly report cards that provide straightforward ratings across key performance indicators. These should include student proficiency and growth in English/language arts and math, with results disaggregated by student subgroup. This is not uncharted territory. Much is known about what makes a school report card useful, relevant, and easy to understand, and many other states already produce high-quality school report cards. Missouri doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel here. We simply need to follow the example set by states that have done this well. It is no coincidence that states with clear and transparent school report cards tend to significantly outperform Missouri on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
In 2021, the Show-Me Institute created its own website, MOSchoolRankings.org, with letter grades for all schools and districts in the state. Ideally, the legislature would require DESE to create something similar.
Policy Recommendation
- Mandate the design and creation of a transparent online school report card system that clearly communicates measures of school quality to parents and community members, including an easy-to-interpret rating system such as letter grades, for every school and district. The report cards should be mobile- and print-friendly.
