The Dashboard

The Rock Hill School Board and the Superintendent have had several discussions about measuring (and sharing) goals and performance toward those goals and how we compare to similar districts.(If you don't measure it, you cannot improve it). In fact, part of the superintendent's evaluation statement was to have goals (and measures) on the web site before the end of the year ("We are committed to  improving  all aspects of the Rock Hill School District, and to communicate our successes and needs. Before December of this year, we will  have a  dashboard  on our web site that defines and measures our goals.  Each area will have multiple performance measures  with comparisons to districts similar to ourselves."). This was feedback from  a meeting the State Superintendent of education had that report cards were confusing to parents - what they wanted was to know how their children compared to other students around the state in an easily understood format. The Rock Hill Schools administration presented their first attempt at what this would look like at Monday's Work Session.

Well, it didn't do much for me. You couldn't tell where you've been (no past data for comparison) nor easily understood comparisons to district's similar to ours. It did give a pretty good "snapshot" of where we are today - and I appreciate the amount of time they have devoted to developing it. The format also lets you see a lot more goals in one quick look than a chart would do. I gave my feedback with a qualifier, it is more important that you sit down with a group of parents for their feedback and custom the dashboard (measures) to what works for them.

It just doesn't do enough for me, but if it works for parents, I'm good with it.

Jim