The Forum Guide to Education Indicators. NFES 2005-802

Overview & Synopsis

The Forum Guide to Education Indicators is designed to help readers better understand how to appropriately develop, apply, and interpret education indicators. More specifically, this document strives to: describe the appropriate role of indicators as tools for measuring educational status and progress; recognize standard definitions and calculations for education indicators; and identify common misuse of education indicators. During the early development of this Guide, the Task Force identified hundreds of performance and context indicators used throughout the United States to assess educational inputs, processes, and outcomes. Among these many indicators, however, a core group were commonly used at all levels of the education system. This document focuses on those commonly used education indicators. More specifically, all of the indicators in this document were selected because they met one or more of the following criteria. These education indicators: help develop a picture of the elementary/secondary education system by measuring system inputs, processes, or outcomes; are commonly accepted and frequently used in some form; produce valid and reliable information; provide measures that identify trends and inform policy and practice in a timely manner; and can be derived from typical elementary/secondary administrative record systems.