I am all about information. I am all about information being available on any number of issues to all who might be interested, with regard to government, its operators and operations.
The more that people are made aware of how their leadership operates, the better they can make the decisions of who is worthy of continuing as leadership, and who ought to be returned to the private sector. Bad decision making comes from bad information.
Benchmarks, and results based scoring for efforts made on our behalf are quite important as we grade our government operators. As the state of Michigan faces the decisions of which services survive the perpetual rounds of budget adjustments unscathed, the more information on those elements within government that they have, the better. The more information and benchmarks we see as voters, the better.
For those who care about schools accountability, and their effectiveness, Michigan just became more transparent. A new tool to examine your school’s effectiveness became available. From the front page of the official school data portal:
MI School Data is your window to a wealth of data on Michigan’s public school education system.
MI School Data provides views of Michigan education data to help make informed educational decisions, to help improve instruction and to enable school systems to prepare a higher percentage of students to succeed in rigorous high school courses, college and challenging careers. Over time MI School Data will be expanded to provide you with more data, more reports and more ways to access the information important to you. We invite you to learn more about Michigan’s Schools through MISchoolData.org.
This is a part of the new dashboard, as promised by the governor when he took office.
It might just make enough of a difference. As our state’s voters become more informed perhaps the turnaround will indeed follow.
The education dashboard is a small part of the overall. In fact it is hardly complete, but is a small window worth looking into.
While there are issues still worth arguing, my cautious optimism is tweaked.
Good job.
