Oregon refines report cards

The Oregon Department of Education is in the middle of a project to redesign its school report cards - the documents that help tell parents and other interested parties how their schools are performing relative to others.

It's a worthwhile project, and it couldn't come at a better time: Although Oregon's school report cards are well-intentioned - and do include plenty of useful information - they definitely could do a better job.

Public education has become increasingly complicated, and it's hard for anyone who's not an expert to keep tabs on all the moving parts.

In fact, sometimes it's hard for the experts to do that: Witness the confusion surrounding the improvement plans that the state's chief education officer, Rudy Crew, asked Oregon school districts to write - and the brouhaha that resulted when Crew ordered some districts to rewrite the plans because he didn't think they aimed high enough.

Given all that, what chance do parents, students or others have at sorting through those complexities to get some accurate and meaningful information?

It gets even tougher when you add the information that parents get from well-meaning (but, we think, misguided) federal programs such as No Child Left Behind, with its user-unfriendly benchmarks such as Adequate Yearly Progress. (That particular federal information, by the way, is not included on the state report cards.)

The Department of Education has rolled out a survey to collect suggestions about how to improve the state report card. Although the survey, frankly, takes a little too long to fill out, it's still a good way to weigh in on some possible changes and to get a sneak peek at some of the different proposals under consideration.

The survey is online at the website oregonreportcard.org through Feb. 3.

And let's hope that the state keeps in mind the importance of simplicity and context as it fine-tunes the next generation of school report cards.

- Albany (Oregon) Democrat-Herald