New database sorts Florida public and charter schools by grad rates, student absenteeism (2024)

• Alex Schachter
• F. Chris Curran
• Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
• Max Schacter
• Parkland
• Safe Schools for Alex
• U.S. Justice Department grant
• University of Florida

An overhauled school safety database has made it easier than ever for parents, educators, and other stakeholders to understand the characteristics of public and charter schools that could affect school safety.

A collaboration between the University of Florida and the nonprofit Safe Schools for Alex — funded with a nearly $2 million grant from the U.S. Justice Department — recently went live on SchoolSafetyDashboard.org. The way it puts reams of data at stakeholders’ fingertips is being called the most comprehensive school safety dashboard in the country.

It allows users to enter up to three schools’ names or school districts at once and see how they compare regarding each school or district’s student population according to racial and ethnic makeup, level of economic disadvantage, and suspension rate for both in-school and out-of-school. Eventually, incident data for Florida schools will also be part of the dashboard.

The database lists 4,120 schools, and they can be sorted according to graduation rates, student/teacher ratio, absentee rates, and other indicators. Seventy-five schools listed have 100% graduation rates, for example. The database shows that five of them have 100% of their students absent for 10% of the year or more.

“By providing this access to data in a way that a broad spectrum of stakeholders can view, there will be opportunities for schools to adjust practices in real time, and for the state to respond to the needs of districts and schools as they emerge,” said F. Chris Curran. He’s an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at UF and the director of the Education Policy Research Center in the UF College of Education.

Before the database went live in 2020, this information was not publicly available in many states, let alone in easy-to-access form, said Max Schachter, who founded Safe Schools for Alex. He started the internationally recognized nonprofit after his 14-year-old son was killed with 16 others in Florida’s worst school shooting in 2018 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

“Since the tragedy, Safe Schools For Alex has been working to enhance school safety by encouraging accuracy and uniformity of school safety data reporting nationwide,” Schacter said. “Parents want and deserve to know what’s happening after they drop their child off.”

According to a news release, UF will train school staff and leaders to use the database.

Post Views: 0