What school leaders should track besides pass rates

A pass rate is a useful headline and a poor diagnostic. It tells a school leader how many students cleared a bar, and almost nothing about why the ones who didn't, didn't — or how close the ones who did came to not making it.

A few metrics explain more for the same effort: the spread of understanding within a class, not just its average, since a healthy-looking mean can hide a third of students who are quietly behind. Which prerequisites show up most often behind a failed topic, since a handful of foundational gaps tend to explain a disproportionate share of downstream struggle. And whether remediation, once assigned, is actually closing gaps on re-test — the metric most dashboards skip entirely.

None of these replace a pass rate. They sit underneath it, and they're the difference between knowing a number moved and knowing why.