Indiana Board of Education demos new school data tool for parents

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana State Board of Education members announced the development of their new website on Wednesday. The website will make it easier for parents to understand data about their child’s school.

Indiana Department of Education staff gave a quick look of the new Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) Dashboard during the board’s meeting Wednesday morning.

The site will provide visual representations of all data pertaining to an individual school, school corporation or the state as a whole. Parents and educators will be able to see data points related to math and reading scores, graduation rates and percentages of students earning college credit through high school courses. They’ll also be able to filter data by factors such as, students on free or reduced-price meal plans, race or ethnicity.

The department developed the site in response to legislation the governor signed last year. Board member Scott Bess said he appreciated the transparency the dashboard will provide to parents and teachers as well as policymakers.

“I think the developers did a really nice job of walking that line between flooding with too much information but presenting it in a way that’s really easy to see that growth, to see the subgroups, and then to see are you trending up or trending down,” Bess said.

The site will go live this fall, though they did not provide an exact date. Individual schools will get a chance to validate the data displayed on their pages before that happens.