Giving Compass' Take:

• Mosi Zuberi learns that his son will not be able to graduate high school. Upon investigating this, he realizes the problem might be with the school and lack of access to proper data that led to his son's predicament. 

•  Grassroots and community organizations are coming together to share information about which schools are effective and drive up graduation rates while working on increasing access to school data. How important is it for families to have access to information about district schools and performance statistics?

• Read about students performance at community schools that offering extra services. 

When Mosi Zuberi learned that his 18-year-old son, Kaja, might not graduate from McClymonds High School in Oakland, he anguished over his parenting missteps, wondering where he had gone wrong. Yet, after seeing data from the California School Dashboard and learning that close to one-fifth of McClymonds’ students were not graduating, he mentally shifted some accountability to the school, seeing a systemic failure to meet the needs of all students.

Zuberi, like many parents across the country, felt he could have been a better advocate for his child had data about the school been more explicit and easier to find.

Data has become particularly relevant for parents whose children attend low-performing schools. It can answer questions about school safety, disciplinary actions taken against certain student groups, graduation rates, attendance and academic performance.

Several parents with children in low-performing schools view a child’s academic struggles as an individual responsibility — their child’s fault, or their own — but access to and understanding of school data can help them identify broader problems.

Many parents, however, experience educational, technological and language barriers to accessing and understanding data, limiting their ability to make informed decisions about their children.

To address this problem, grassroots parent-networks have been sprouting up to give parents the tools they need to make use of public data systems. In addition, federal and many local governments are advocating for policies that would make educational data — similar to what Zuberi saw on the California School Dashboard — more accessible, transparent and helpful to parents.

In a search for answers, Zuberi came across and joined The Oakland REACH, a grass-roots parent organization started in 2016. The organization goes school-to-school and door-to-door to provide parents with tools to help them access, understand and use school data to hold officials accountable for academic outcomes.

Read the full article about access to school data by Jenny Abamu at EdSurge