Whether a school district asks me for advice on efficiency or effectiveness issues, the first thing I ask for is the relevant data. Inevitably, the data that show up on my desk have been prepared to satisfy governmental reporting requirements. In private industry, we call this compliance reporting, and it means reports that present data in ways useful to third parties - not to performers. By contrast, management reports deliver data to insiders who are responsible for getting a job done. Management reports lead to decisions about how to improve performance.
School districts have management information systems.
For the most part, only the largest districts have been able to afford automated instructional management systems for teachers in the classroom. For those without such systems, most of the classroom work is done by hand on paper. In any event, the reporting capabilities of these systems are generally limited to compliance matters. This is true whether the reporting is done inside the district or outside by service bureaus. Educational compliance reports are almost always averages of averages.