Dive Brief:

• The California Department of Education, which had already released a school accountability dashboard, has released yet another tool, the California Model Five-by-Five Placement Reports & Data.
• The latest accountability site is being heralded as a "one-stop" comparison tool, more useful than the initial dashboard, lauded for its ability to highlight high-performing schools for best practices and low-performing schools that need the most help, EdSource reports.
• The Five-by-Five Placement Reports & Data displays how each of a district's schools performed across performance indicators on color grids and provides a link to individual dashboard reports, simplifying processes for districts, schools and parents.

Dive Insight:

As implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act looms ever closer, states are working to get their accountability plans in place. With more control being pushed back to the state and local level under the new law, states have more say in how exactly they go about doing that.

That control could also make it easier for those states that have solid models in place across a variety of metrics, such as California, to share best practices with their peers. Standard metrics of the past such as simple district averages can become skewed by high-performing schools, thereby masking the struggling ones. However, in a more advanced metric model like the Five-by-Five, low-performing schools will be more likely to stand out, and thereby receive the attention they need, when they need it. Districts can then clearly observe with a more well-rounded and detailed picture picture of where to invest resources, and in a more expeditious way.