Congressman Fattah Gives High Marks to the Department of Education for its Newest Transparency Initiative

The Current Status of America's Education System Revealed

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), today praised the Department of Education for its new website that will provide access to key national and state education data. The information will feature the national progress being made on every level of the education system. Moreover, communities will now be able to engage in a conversation about the status of their schools.

It's called the United States Education Dashboard and it offers key indicators of whether the country is making progress towards the President's goal that by 2020 America will once again have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world.

Congressman Fattah said, "This Dashboard will, for the first time, provide data on the two greatest questions of educational opportunity; what students know, and how fairly the schools are funded. This is a great step forward and I applaud the Administration for taking this on."

The Dashboard will make it possible for parents, educators, community leaders and policymakers to make critical assessments about where students have a fair shot, and where they're being left behind.

Fattah said, "Next week I will be reintroducing legislation to address the very issues raised in this data collection, the Student Bill of Rights Act. This legislation requires states to own up to their funding choices and the resulting effects on student achievement, and to make a plan to fix disparities. At the heart of that legislation is the ability for all to know where tax dollars are spent and which children are receiving what quality of education."

"The Dashboard highlights both our successes and challenges while providing a new level of transparency that is absolutely essential to our efforts to accelerate student achievement," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "We hope communities will use this information to determine where we need to focus on reforms and investments in education."

On the Dashboard webpage, viewers will be able to see firsthand indictors of the nation's performance in education, gauge their state's progress and see how their state is performing compared to others. The Dashboard allows users to quickly find information they need and view it in several different ways. It also allows users to download customized reports for further analyses. Users are encouraged to provide comments and feedback on the Dashboard so that usability and functionality can be enhanced in updates and subsequent versions.

SOURCE Office of Congressman Chaka Fattah