Lessons From the Wall Chart

Item

Title

Lessons From the Wall Chart

Abstract/Description

In 1984 the wall chart of State Education Statistics broke the historic silence on reporting state-by-state comparisons of student performance. Prior to its release, chief state school officers and the education establishment had been protected from disclosure of poor performance by the states in education. The wall chart, by laying out the facts in straightforward detail, exposed our national shortcomings in education and focused attention on the states where much of education policymaking takes place. This article reports on the history of the wall chart, addresses the criticisms that followed its release, and assesses its impact. It goes on to propose recommendations for improving the usefulness of state-by-state rankings. The insights it offers on designing state education comparisons may be particularly helpful as the nation and states undertake the expansion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress to report on student performance at the state level.

Author/creator

Ginsburg, Alan L.

Noell, Jay

Plisko, Valena White

Date

1988

In publication

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

Volume

10

Issue

1

Pages

1-12

Resource type

en Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

en Published Text

Scholarship genre

en Historical

Language

en

Open access/full-text available

en No

Peer reviewed

en Yes

ISSN

0162-3737

DOI

10.3102/01623737010001001

URL

Official Publisher's Webpage (SAGE Journals)

Citation

Ginsburg, A. L., Noell, J., & Plisko, V. W. (1988). Lessons From the Wall Chart. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 10(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737010001001

Cited in

Democratizing Educational Innovation and Improvement: The Policy Contexts of Improvement Research in Education

Item sets

Handbook Chapter 10 Citations

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