Blogger Jennifer Abell (Municipalist Q & A is here), a school board member in Charles County, Maryland Public Schools, filed a formal information request to have her own board release school-by-school Advanced Placement scores. The Washington Post has it all here:
Abell said releasing test scores on a school-by-school basis provides Board of Education members with the information they need to manage resources effectively. For the past several years, individual schools' AP test scores have been released to the Board of Education in closed session; in contrast, High School Assessment and Maryland State Assessment scores are made public each year.
"We're supposed to be making data-driven decisions -- that message is pushed down our throats at every conference we attend," Abell said. "But it's hard to do that when you can't get the data."
The school district ended up releasing the info, but according to Abell's blog, with plenty of the information blacked out, even in documents provided only to board members. In a detailed analysis she published on her blog Dec. 4, Jennifer called that state of affairs "absolutely ludicrous."
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