Are active citizens able to get access to data that can help them assess the state of Tacoma schools?

Not long ago, several Tacoma residents were discussing the state of our schools, and the conversation moved to consider the status of African American male high school students. We noticed on the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s website that fewer and fewer students show up for each successive year at schools serving larger proportions of students of color. Yet the explanation for the data was not convincing. We could see that each year lots of students disappear. This do not appear as big percentages because most are classified as having moved out of the district or to other schools. Is that really what happens? Available anecdotal information suggests African American males are particularly at risk to leave schools altogether during the high school years.

We believe these students are poorly served by our schools, and that the failure rate is completely unacceptable.

It would be good to get data on all the kids in these schools, organized so we can understand, for each year and for different social groups, how many credits they achieve, their gradepoint averages, and for those students who do leave, what actually happened to them.

One of our number raised this need for data at a meeting of the Tacoma School Board, and they did talk about it for a short time. Yet their discussion mainly focused on the difficulties of finding out what became of students classified as having left the district. It is our guess that the data on groups’ achievements at various grade levels is available, and could be put on the school district web site tomorrow. (end of original posting)

There is a good development on this question. The person who asked the question at the School Board meeting received a call from the District director of research, with an offer to get together and share the data. More on this later.

There is an object lesson for us: Tune in to what is going on in the schools. If you have questions, ask. If you need data to help you make sense of things, ask for it. Get involved.