Your Guide to Creating Good School Research Metrics

Access your KPIs online;
Measure your success;

Navigation: All Balanced Scorecard Articles > BSC Guides

Coming up with a good set of school research metrics involves careful consideration of the four important criterions. Moreover, school managers need to constantly refine and revise these metrics. Check additional information about school research metrics.

School research is a broad subject in its sense. However, this subject will not be fully complete without the use of a set of indicators. Collectively, this is what experts refer to as school research metrics. School research covers every aspect of the educational institution from the turnover rate, regional examination passing rate, professional licensing, or board exam success rate, even to the professor to student ratio. Moreover, to effectively measure and make full use of the results of the research, school managers should look into the most appropriate type of indicators or metrics.

Before looking into the possible metrics of school research, consider first the purpose of the subject. Generally, school researchers conduct such activity with the purpose of creating a systematic performance management and measurement scheme. School research also paves the way to achieving an effective communications tool by providing a graphic representation of the status of the organization; and it implies ways to align plans and activities with the institution's goals, vision, and mission.

Every school research activity should have what experts call the "balanced mix". Consisting this "balanced mix" are the volume rates and the leading metrics. Data on rates and volume is easy to obtain. However, creating an impartial, practical, and useful set of metrics can be very daunting.

There are, however, rules in coming up with good metrics. The manager should look only into actual results that took place during the recent years. This literally means that the data should be fresh and, most importantly, real. Every metric should also serve as a target, or simply a benchmark. The purpose, again, of the research is to know the status. Therefore, each metric should produce values that indicate how far or near the school is in terms of targeting goals. Finally, each metric should serve as a traffic light, green for go, yellow for proceed with caution, and red for stop.

The third criterion in creating good metrics simply suggests that the indicators should be functional. Researching about and measuring the performance of the school is not just all about knowing the how, it should also answer "what" the organization should do, "when" the body implements a new method, and "who" among the school board members should spearhead an implementation.

Managers can use many possible metrics in school research. Common metrics include: course completion rate, amount for grant allocations, amount for PIF funds, amount for PDF or professional development funding, skills development rates, capital improvement spending, fill rate, employee satisfaction rate, financial aid rate, frequency of public relations and marketing events, number of new programs and courses offered, ratio of students to equipment or technology, student retention rates, transfer rates, actual spending to allocated budget ratio, program review completion rate, student satisfaction rate, core indicator VTEA retention rate, and term persistence rating.

Each of those sample metrics fall on a unique metric category: student access, student success, course success, basic skills, transfer rate, transfer and completion, revenue, FTES revenue, productivity revenue, and accountability metrics.

The process of creating effective school research metrics is not a one-time process. Managers should constantly develop new sets of indicators, revise, and refine existing metrics. For as long there are goals in the school organization, there will always be the metrics ready to measure your school's performance.

If you are interested in school research metrics, check this link to find out more about school research dashboard. Also, you can check other articles in BSC Guides category.

Balanced Scorecard Toolkit includes step-by-step manuals, documents, presentations, check lists designed to help business professionals with successful development and implementation of Balanced Scorecard. Learn more about BSC Toolkit.