Education Law

It's good to be a teen!

BoardBuzz came across this interesting article in USA Today about whether kids are better off today than their parents were at their age. The article is based on a report released this week by the Foundation for Child Development. The Foundation created the Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI) that tracks 28 key quality of life indicators of teenagers over the past 31 years.

BoardBuzz was happy to hear that:
? Overall teenagers are better off today than they were nearly 30 years ago.
? They are less likely to participate in risky behaviors like smoking, binge drinking, and using drugs.
? Teenage girls are much less likely to become pregnant.

However, BoardBuzz was dismayed to hear that:
? Teenagers today are more likely to live in poverty.
? They are almost three times more likely to be obese than just a generation ago.
? Teen pregnancies rates are starting to rise.

The report got BoardBuzz thinking about how such an index could apply to education. Unlike schools that are typically judged on one indicator?test scores?this report evaluates the quality of our children's lives using a variety of indicators like poverty rates, teen pregnancy rates, and drug and alcohol abuse to gain a broad picture of the quality of our children's lives. So BoardBuzz asked itself why aren't schools evaluated in such a fashion? Wouldn't our children be better off if their schools were evaluated not just on math and reading scores but along with other indicators of school success as well, such as whether they provide a safe learning environment, prepare students for college and the workforce, and prepare students to be good citizens.

Our own Center for Public Education provides a list of good indicators for successful schools in their Good Measures for Good Schools tool. There you can find 28 measures of school success and how they should be used and maybe, most important, how they shouldn't be used. BoardBuzz recommends you check it out so you can look beyond your schools' test scores to determine for yourself the true quality of your local schools.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on July 24, 2008 (boomark / email).