California relaunches dashboard to track school performance

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - After a two-year hiatus, the California Schools Dashboard is back live with up-to-date data on how students in schools, school districts, and the state are performing.

Statewide, the tool reports California continues to deal with "chronic absenteeism" and low English and math scores.

The tool grades different indicators on a scale from "very low" to "medium" to "very high." 

Those indicators include English language arts, English learning, math, absenteeism, graduation rates, suspension rates and college/career. 

It also breaks down how 13 different student groups, broken down by ethnicity and socioeconomic status, perform in each of those indicators. In the past, the dashboard used colors to measure performance.

The dashboard satisfies a requirement brought on by the Local Control Funding Formula statute from 2013. 

It changed how California provides funding to public schools and holds education offices accountable for student performance.

The color-coded tool was suspended in 2020 for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, marked a full return of the system.

"Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, state law allows the 2022 Dashboard to only display the most current year of data," reads a statement on the dashboard website. 

You can access the dashboard here. 

In the search bar, simply enter your country, district or school and the tool will take you to the data available. 

For instance, if you look up the San Francisco Unified School District, the tool reports for 2022, absenteeism is considered high, math scores are low. 

The tool suggests SFUSD is doing well in keeping suspension rates low.

The dashboard is used to see exactly where schools need improvement. 

The state board of education plans to publish data every December.