Atlanta - The 2008 Report Card for Parents, a searchable database of statistics on Georgia's public schools, is now available and posted on the Web site of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation at www.gppf.org.
The Report Card, which has been produced and published by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation since 1996, provides valuable information for discussions that will help parents make informed decisions about the quality of public education in Georgia.
"With the increase in charter schools, parents have more schools than ever from which to choose and it becomes more important than ever for parents to have quality information about academic performance," said Kelly McCutchen, the Foundation's executive vice president.
"For the vast majority of parents, assessing the quality of a school can be a daunting task with unfamiliar terms and voluminous data. This report card offers parents the simple facts to aid in the assessment of their children's education, whether they're in a district or relocating," McCutchen said.
The 2008 Report Card for Parents numerically ranks 1,190 public elementary schools, 486 middle schools and 380 high schools in the state by an achievement score based on the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards. Because there is a strong link between poverty and test scores - the higher the poverty rate, the lower the test scores - the report includes two other criteria for information purposes only. The first is the poverty rate - the percentage of students in each school who qualify for the federal free/reduced-price lunch program. The second is a poverty index that measures how well a school is performing relative to its poverty rate.
"The Foundation's efforts to ensure that the data can be transparent and easily understood will help raise the involvement level of those who want to influence Georgia's most important conversation - the one about the future of education," said Rogers Wade, president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
The Report Card, which has been produced and published by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation since 1996, provides valuable information for discussions that will help parents make informed decisions about the quality of public education in Georgia.
"With the increase in charter schools, parents have more schools than ever from which to choose and it becomes more important than ever for parents to have quality information about academic performance," said Kelly McCutchen, the Foundation's executive vice president.
"For the vast majority of parents, assessing the quality of a school can be a daunting task with unfamiliar terms and voluminous data. This report card offers parents the simple facts to aid in the assessment of their children's education, whether they're in a district or relocating," McCutchen said.
The 2008 Report Card for Parents numerically ranks 1,190 public elementary schools, 486 middle schools and 380 high schools in the state by an achievement score based on the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards. Because there is a strong link between poverty and test scores - the higher the poverty rate, the lower the test scores - the report includes two other criteria for information purposes only. The first is the poverty rate - the percentage of students in each school who qualify for the federal free/reduced-price lunch program. The second is a poverty index that measures how well a school is performing relative to its poverty rate.
"The Foundation's efforts to ensure that the data can be transparent and easily understood will help raise the involvement level of those who want to influence Georgia's most important conversation - the one about the future of education," said Rogers Wade, president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.