About the Education Consumers Foundation

What is the Education Consumers Foundation?
The Education Consumers Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the interests of education’s consumers. Its mission is to provide clear and unbiased information to education's consumers by publishing authoritative reports on education issues, by highlighting effective practices, and by managing a network of experienced scholars and educators who are available for consultation with parents, elected officials, and other consumer stakeholders. Click here for more information on the organization.

Who is an education consumer?
Education consumers are the parents, taxpayers, and their elected representatives who fund and rely on public education.

Why did the Foundation create the Value-Added Achievement Awards?
Tennessee’s value-added data, pioneered in the early 1990s by Dr. William Sanders, is the fairest and most accurate methodology for measuring school performance available today. The Value-Added Achievement Awards were created to demonstrate the ability of this model to help the general public see which schools are truly the highest performers and to honor the educators who are producing these exceptional results.

Why did the Foundation create the School Performance Charts?
While Tennessee makes enormous amounts of school performance data available to the public, much of it requires additional analysis by educators and statistical experts. The Education Consumers Foundation's School Performance Charts are designed to synthesize and package this information in a form that is useful to parents and other non-educators.

What else does the Foundation do?
The Education Consumers Foundation’s mission is to provide consumer-friendly information about education policy and practice to the consuming public. Unlike most organizations that are concerned with education, it views consumers as having separate and distinct interests from those of the education industry, so it does not try to serve the interests of both groups. The Foundation achieves its aims by a variety of activities in addition to the Value-Added Achievement Awards. These include the compilation of information and materials on its website ( www.education-consumers.com), the publication of briefings on various education issues (See the list of available briefings click here), and the management of the Education Consumers Consultants Network ( click here)--a partnership of experienced scholars and educators who provide consumer-friendly assessment of education policy and practice.

How can I support the organization or learn more?
For more information on the Education Consumers Foundation, including information on how to support its efforts, visit the website of the Education Consumers Foundation and its sister organization, the Education Consumers Clearinghouse, at www.education-consumers.com.