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OPINIONS
Editorial: More information about schools helps parents, communities
School buses from Cabell and Wayne counties and elsewhere in West Virginia will be back on the road today as classes begin for the 2008-09 school year.
Purchase this photoSchool begins today in West Virginia. Most schools in Ohio and Kentucky started classes for the 2008-09 school year earlier this month. Today, West Virginia schools join them in opening their doors to students. About 12,300 children will attend public schools in Cabell County, and about 7,700 will attend in Wayne County, based on last year's enrollment figures.
This will be a year of change for some students in Cabell County, with the new Martha Elementary School and Barboursville Middle School scheduled to open. And it will likely be the last year for students in the existing Southside Elementary, Huntington Middle and Milton Middle schools.
It's more than buildings, however. This year, all parents or guardians of Cabell County public school students will be able to view their children's grades weekly via the Internet. The county is using Edline, an online program that allows parents to see grades given by teachers weekly.
Edline will help parents who want to be involved in their children's education. Rather than wait until the end of the six-week grading period, parents will be able to track how their children are doing week by week and step in when problems arise.
Meanwhile, parents in Ohio will have more information about their local schools beginning today. This is the day the Ohio Department of Education releases its annual report card for school districts and school buildings. As usual, the report cards will contain some basic summaries and labels describing districts and schools as excellent, effective and such, but this year there's more.
Ohio has a new "value-added" measurement on the school building and district report cards that shows the amount of student academic growth for the same group of students from previous school years. To put it another way, the state wants parents to know if their children are getting a year's worth of education each year.
Schools need to be more accountable to students and their parents than they have in years past. That's one goal of President Bush's No Child Left Behind effort. Whether No Child Left Behind has been of a benefit or a hindrance to education is debatable.
The Ohio report card effort could give people another tool in evaluating the effectiveness of their local schools. That will be determined after the data are released today.
Accountability requires information. It's easy to be deluged by too much information without knowing how to interpret it. But it's better to have too much information than none at all. Public education is moving in the direction of disclosing more information to parents about how individual students and to communities about how school districts and individual schools are doing. It's up to parents and the community to put that information to the best use.
Parental involvement is more important than ever. These tools will help parents and the public be more involved in pushing for better results from our public schools.
