Forsyth County Schools ranked near the top in numerous categories in the 2008 Report Card for Parents, a searchable database of statistics on Georgia's public schools. The latest list is now available and posted on the Web site of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation at www.gppf.org.
Superintendent Buster Evans said the Foundation has done an "excellent job" tracking the successes of Georgia schools.
"We're thrilled to have our schools rank so high on this year's report card for parents," he said. "We're particularly pleased with South Forsyth High School's rank of seventh out of 380 high schools. We encourage parents to take a look at this wonderful resource, not only to see the successes of our schools, but also the areas where we can improve."
The Report Card, which has been produced and published by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation since 1996, provides valuable information for discussions that will help parents make informed decisions about the quality of public education in Georgia.
"With the increase in charter schools, parents have more schools than ever from which to choose and it becomes more important than ever for parents to have quality information about academic performance," said the Foundation's executive vice president, Kelly McCutchen.
"For the vast majority of parents, assessing the quality of a school can be a daunting task with unfamiliar terms and voluminous data. This report card offers parents the simple facts to aid in the assessment of their children's education, whether they're in a district or relocating."
The 2008 Report Card for Parents numerically ranks 1,190 public elementary schools, 486 middle schools and 380 high schools in the state by an achievement score based on the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards. Because there is a strong link between poverty and test scores (the higher the poverty rate, the lower the test scores), the report includes two other criteria for information purposes only. The first is the poverty rate - the percentage of students in each school who qualify for the federal free/reduced-price lunch program. The second is a poverty index that measures how well a school is performing relative to its poverty rate.
"The Foundation's efforts to ensure that the data can be transparent and easily understood will help raise the involvement level of those who want to influence Georgia's most important conversation - the one about the future of education," said Rogers Wade, president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
The data were provided by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement and the Georgia Department of Education.
The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a think tank formed in 1991, is a nonpartisan, member-supported research and education foundation that promotes free markets, limited government and individual responsibility.
Labels: 2008 report card for parents, Forsyth County Schools, georgia public poilcy foundation
# posted by
Brian Vanderhoff @ 11:49 AM
