Educational Indicator Systems: Observations on Their Structure, Interpretation, and Use

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in educational indicators. This topic has been the focus of an ever-increasing number of reports, articles, study commissions, and national and state panels. Organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and the RAND Corporation, and nearly all state governments, are currently involved in developing and improving educational indicators.' Hardly an educational group or agency at the national or state level has not become involved in the business of educational indicators during the 1980's (Smith, 1988, p. 487). Burstein, Oakes, and Guiton (1992) document that this surge of interest in the United States can be traced at least as far back as a 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, which triggered broad public concern about education and initiated a strong push for closer monitoring of the system, its schools, and its personnel. In 1984, the secretary of education's compared states' educational performance. The Wall Chart prompted the CCSSO to create the State Educational Assessment Center and begin work on a fairer and more comparable set of indicators. In the following year, the National Research Council recommended that data collection and reporting be reorganized under a stronger federal agency. International indicator efforts received a boost in 1987 with U.S. government support for a cross-national indicator project within the Office for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. Running in parallel, national indicator work was also strengthened by the Hawkins-Stafford Act of 1988, which expanded the National Assessment for Education Progress to include state-by-state data, facilitated national and state cooperation in data collection, and established the Special Study Panel on Education Indicators to advise the National Center for Education Statis-