School data goes online

One result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 became public this week when Education Department officials unveiled a Web site with school-test data.

The new information system at www.schoolresults.org offers access to comparative school data that previously was not readily available to the public, Education officials said. Data from six states -- Delaware, Florida, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington -- is online, and Education officials said they soon hope to publish data from all 50 states. The majority of states could have their data online by summer, they said.

Only data from elementary school testing is available so far. According to the No Child law, championed by President Bush, testing of middle school and high school students will not begin until 2006.

Using the site's interactive tables, a parent could type in a Virginia ZIP code, for example, to see a list of schools in Arlington County with the Standards of Learning test results from each school. The results are sorted by enrollment, percent of economically disadvantaged students and the percent of students who showed adequate yearly progress in reading and math proficiency. The Web site also displays statistical snapshots of data from each state, including participation rates in the testing on which the results are based.

To pay for the project, the department formed a public/private partnership with the Broad Foundation, which supports elementary and secondary public education. Two other organizations contributed data analysis and research to the effort. They are Standard and Poor's School Evaluation Services, which does data analysis, and the National Center for Educational Accountability, an educational research group. The Broad Foundation and the Education Department contributed $4.5 million each to develop the site, said Susan Patrick, deputy director of the department's Office of Educational Technology, which will oversee the project.