The following competition strategies help improve student achievement. School Report Cards One competition strategy involves publishing report cards of school performance.
Schools pay attention when they are publicly compared to other schools.
Tennessee is leading the way in using the publication of school report cards to help raise student achievement. Tennessee's model includes fiscal, demographic, and student discipline data. The fiscal information reveals a school's spending priorities and its relative efficiency, the discipline data reflect a school's social climate, and the demographic data allow a school's performance to be compared to that of others with like student populations and educational challenges. To ensure that schools focus on education priorities, the model aligns report card standards with state education objectives. When schools hit performance targets, they receive financial bonuses.