The update looks good. District reading proficiency is up three points. Attendance is up. The board thanks the team and moves on.
Underneath the average, one elementary school dropped four points. Students with disabilities fell further behind. English learners didn’t move at all. None of that shows up in a district number, and an average can stay green while a group inside it turns red.
An average answers one question: how is the district doing overall? Boards also need to know who the plan is working for. That means seeing each key measure broken out by school and by student group, using the same groups states already report: students with disabilities, English learners, economically disadvantaged students, and racial and ethnic groups.
Two cautions come with that. The first is privacy. When a group is small, its results can point to individual students, which is why states set a minimum group size for public reporting. Washington’s state education agency, for example, withholds results for any student group with fewer than 10 students. A public dashboard should follow the same rule your state uses.
The second is focus. A dashboard with two hundred cells hides the story as well as an average does. Show the overall number first, keep the breakouts one click away, and flag any group moving in the opposite direction from the average.
Decide the breakouts when the plan is adopted, not after the first good-looking update. A board that asks for group results only when the overall number falls will miss the years when the average rises and a group quietly falls behind.
The question isn’t whether the district improved. It’s whether the improvement reached the students the plan was written for.