Over the past five months, the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) has been focused on bringing creative energy to a national opportunity—improving readability and access to powerful school information.
We are pleased to share Building State Capacity for Powerful School Information findings brief from the My School Information Design Challenge, which reviews the research that inspired the project, recaps design submissions, features winning designs, and highlights the key elements of a high-quality report card.
Our goal is simple: to inspire states to develop the next generation of school report cards.
ExcelinEd learned that, to be effective, school report cards must have the following design elements:
- User-friendly interface, including simple informational detail and summaries, customization, easy-to-interpret and the ability to be read on the web, in print, and on mobile devices.
- Functionality that empowers action, allows easy navigation and provides comprehensive and comparable information.
- Creatively visualizing complex performance data and trends.
The good news is that with today’s technologies, such as mobile delivery, and graphic design capabilities, states have the opportunity to engage the public in ways never before possible.
Despite the difficulty of the task, ExcelinEd is committed to the next—and possibly most important—step in the challenge process: working with states to reinvent their school report cards.
To kick-start state-level efforts, ExcelinEd has shared the winning designs and contact information for the winning designers with state departments of education, policymakers and lawmakers.
We look forward to assisting state partners and educators to revolutionize parental access to powerful school information.
