Posted by
Waski_the_Squirrel on Friday, August 08, 2008 5:08:57 PM
One of the things I've always appreciated about North Dakota is that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has a wealth of information about each and every school. The drawback is that you need to dig to find that information. It's not easy to find things on the
DPI website. Now, the North Dakota Policy Council has put some of that information on its website
Sunshine on Schools.
Their source of information is the DPI. I am surprised that, for some schools, the information does not seem to agree with what I've found on the DPI website. For example, certain schools have different enrollments on the two websites.
Now this is a great thing because the public pays a lot of tax money toward schools. They need to know what is being done with that money. This website gives the yearly expenses and income of each school. It gives cost per pupil, tax rates, teacher pay, and administrator pay. These are all good thigns to know.
Now there is a lot missing. At the moment, I can't find anything about test scores or AYP. I can't find square mileage of each district. These would be useful things to know as a family coming into a school. Perhaps they are coming.
A few things puzzle me about the website. I don't understand the graphs of population. A number of schools that no longer exist are listed on the website. A click on those names gives some kind of limited information. Districts that are more recently closed give more information. That doesn't surprise me, but it leads me into what does surprise me.
My own school recently consolidated with a neighboring district. We got their students. Yet, when you click on the name of my district, the graph shows a steady decline. Since it lists our current student body correctly, that makes me ask: do the older numbers include the neighboring district? If so, that's misleading.
I thik this website is a good beginning. It is more user-friendly than the DPI website. However, I want to see more information on it and I want to see some things cleared up.