REPORTS TELL PARENTS HOW SCHOOLS PERFORM

School children throughout New York City are taking home report cards this month—not their own, but those of their schools. The reports were ordered by Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, who has said that schools can be improved through more involvement by parents. The three-page annual reports, similar to those issued in New Jersey and other states, compare various aspects of a school's performance against the school system's. Report cards like these have been gaining in popularity throughout the country as a means of making schools more accountable to parents and other groups. "It's getting to be a pretty wide-spread practice," said Kathy Christy, a spokes-woman for the Education Commission of the States, a national clearinghouse for school statistics. "What parents want to know is, even though my child got straight As, how is my school or my district doing compared to other schools?" About forty-two states require that schools report to one central office about their performance or student achievement, she said, although not all require that they make such information available to parents.