Atlanta Public Schools launched a data website Tuesday that provides information about schools’ test scores, enrollment, and graduation rates.
The website, apsinsights.org, was created with money from a $2.1 million grant announced in February from the Walton Family Foundation that supports the district's "Turnaround Strategy" to improve the lowest-performing schools.
The foundation is run by the family that founded Wal-Mart and has supported charter schools for twenty years.
As part of APS’ improvement efforts the district adopted a charter-system model.
Several of the district's schools are managed by charter school groups.
The new website is intended to be easy to use and give parents insight into how their children’s school matches up to others in the district and around the state, according to APS.
The site features an enrollment map that is searchable by grade level and home address.
Another section allows users to look up school profiles that show attendance data, race and ethnicity information, graduation rates, and the scores received on the state measurement known as the College and Career Ready Performance Index.
“We know that family engagement is essential to help students perform at their highest levels. In developing our new family engagement plan, we learned that parents want more, easily accessible information about our schools,” said superintendent Meria Carstarphen, in a written statement. “Our goal is that APS Insights will provide families with the answers they want about school performance, continue to increase our level of transparency and promote more family engagement.”
The foundation’s grant also supports other turnaround-related efforts.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution also has an online guide that provides information on schools throughout the state.
In other Education news:
About the Author
