Managing for Results in America's Great City Schools 2020: Results from Fiscal Year 2018-19. A Report of the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project

In 2002 the Council of the Great City Schools and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project were to: (1) Establish a common set of "key performance indicators" (KPIs) in a range of school operations, including business services, finances, human resources, and technology; (2) Use these KPIs to benchmark and compare the performance of the nation's largest urban public school systems; and (3) Use the results to improve operational performance in urban public schools. The teams leading the project's work have used a sophisticated approach to define, collect and validate school-system data. This process calls for each KPI to have a clearly defined purpose to justify its development, and extensive documentation of the "metric definitions" ensures that the expertise of the technical teams is fully captured. At the core of the methodology is the principle of "continuous improvement." The teams are instructed to focus on operational indicators that can be "benchmarked" and are "actionable," and thus can be strategically managed by setting improvement targets. Each page of this report shows detailed information for a single KPI measure. Sections include: (1) Accounts Payable; (2) Cash Management; (3) Compensation; (4) Financial Management; (5) Grants Management; (6) Procurement; (7) Risk Management; (8) Food Services; (9) Maintenance & Operations; (10) Safety & Security; (11) Transportation; (12) Human Resources; and (13) Information Technology. [For the 2019 report, see ED610814.]