The Center for Education Data Research (CEDR) — affiliated with the University of Washington, Bothell — launched a new Web tool that allows the public to take a clear look into education achievement data for school districts in Washington state.

The Web tool, called the Washington Achievement Data Explorer (WADE), uses publicly available data from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to drive a colorful display of school district progress between 2002 and 2010. Users can compare demographics, district resources and academic indicators for most of Washington’s school districts.

“Parents, students, employers and policymakers are always looking for ways to assess educational achievement … to see what seems to be working and what does not,” says Dan Goldhaber, director of CEDR, “but sorting through the mountains of data can be daunting. The WADE tool makes it far easier to interpret the achievement statistics by presenting the information in an interactive and intuitive visual format.”

CEDR is an organization dedicated to informing policy through sound empirical research, and providing accessible and comprehensible information to education stakeholders in Washington state.