What Do High Performing School Districts Measure?

The Rock Hill School Administration is using examples from Montgomery County Maryland to help justify changes to a grading policy. One of their (Montgomery County) measures is to track graduates to see how many graduate from college. Since our main objective is to prepare students for the "real world", shouldn't all school districts measure where their graduates are 4 years after school? Wouldn't this be a measure of the district's performance? And, to go further, shouldn't we survey graduates at 1 year out to see what we could have done to make their transition better? And survey the customers (colleges, business, military) for the same input? And what about current students on who is doing a good job teaching, or current teachers on who is doing a good job as an administrator, or District Administrator? How do you make continuous improvement without this input? Friday's New York Times has an article on using Student Feedback to help improve teaching. You should click her to read.