Logan has been writing about Grant County Public Schools lately, so let’s use that school district as a way to introduce all of you to a neat on-line tool from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability.
This tool is called the “Kentucky District Data Profiles.” It is a PDF document listing two pages of statistics for each school district in Kentucky. The current on-line version is for the 2007-2008 school year, but the 2008-2009 draft was approved on June 14, 2009 by the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee and should be uploaded shortly.
Here are the two pages of data for Grant County for the 2007-2008 year (you can click on them to enlarge). 
As I look at this data, Grant County seems to be performing around the state average on most of these indicators. The only notable exception is the percentage of AP Exams scoring 3 or higher, where Grant County’s 12 percent figure is way below the state average of 47 percent. That won’t change much when the new data comes out, but otherwise Grant County is an average performer.
So, this makes me wonder: why didn’t Grant County want to send us their superintendent’s annual evaluation?
Anyway, getting back to the District Data Profiles, I think the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability deserves a hearty “well done” for creating this useful tool that everyone in the commonwealth can use to learn more about their taxpayer funded public school system.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Useful Tool: Kentucky District Data Profiles
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The Grant County Schools had no objections to you seeing the superintendent's evaluation. Our procedure on open record requests is to have our school board lawyer review all request so that the correct response to the person who is asking for the document receive the request in a timely and professional manner. There is no other intent involved in our normal procedures. Michael J. Hibbett, Superintendent
Superintendent Hibbett,
The requested records were received. Thank you.
There are two issues here:
1) The original request was addressed to "Whom It May Concern". This request was forwarded to your attorney who's response was to give the name of the person who could fill the request. That same letter instructed us to send a second request to the exact same address. When said person received the request it was once again forwarded it to the same attorney!
There is no reason this request couldn't have been filled when the initial letter was received. Instead, Grant County Schools opted to give a legal runaround. This doesn't seem like true transparency.
2) The second concern deals with the amount of money being spent for attorneys to respond to simple Open Records Act requests. I can understand the need and desire for professionalism. What I can't understand is how there is no one on staff at Grant County Schools who can prepare a copy of a superintendents review professionally without having to involve and eventually compensate an attorney.
With that in mind, the same attorney had to be engaged twice because of the initial legal run-around.
I am concerned that with activity like this, taxpayer money is being wasted. There must be a more efficient manner in which to respond to these requests.
The Bluegrass Institute is just posing the question: Is it necessary to engage and compensate an attorney to provide public information about a superintendents performance?
Logan Morford
Vice-President of Transparency Initiatives
Post a Comment