What Makes a Performance Indicator an Equity‐Driven, High‐Performance Indicator?

M uch understandable confusion resides around the meaning of the terms benchmark indicators, performance indicators, dashboard indicators, scorecard indicators, and performance metrics. As such, just as it is important for the members of your organization to determine a conceptual framework for outcomes-based assessment (e.g., an explanation of why you are engaging in outcomesbased assessment and what you hope to gain from it), as well as developing a common language for engaging in outcomes-based assessment (e.g., define what each term used means), it is important that the terms benchmark indicators, performance indicators, dashboard indicators, scorecard indicators, and performance metrics are also defined. For purposes of this manuscript, we will use benchmark indicators, performance indicators, dashboard indicators, scorecard indicators, and performance metrics interchangeably. Dolence and Norris (1995) defined performance indicators as “measures that are monitored in order to determine the health, effectiveness, & efficiency of an institution” (p. 35). For practical application of what this means, consider the following analogy: I used to drive a red Jeep Wrangler that only had three indicators on the dashboard: (1) the temperature gauge—which was an indicator of how hot or cool the engine was, (2) the speedometer—an indicator of how fast or slow the Jeep was going, and (3) the gas gauge—an indicator of how much fuel was in the tank. These three indicators were broad signals of three areas of Jeep performance. As such, they informed some decisions I could make in order to optimize the performance of the Jeep. For example, if the gas gauge became low, I would determine that the Jeep needed more fuel and I knew how to respond to that. However, I learned through trial and error by recording some data points in a notebook which kind of fuel provided the most optimal performance for my Jeep. I also learned that the Jeep ran out of gas before the indicator actually recorded the fuel as empty. So, the decision I would make was to put more fuel in the gas tank when the indicator reached 1/4 full as opposed to 1/8 full. This was true about my Jeep Wrangler, but I don’t know whether it was true for other Jeep Wranglers because I never collected that data. Taking this analogy further, if the temperature gauge indicated the engine was hot, I needed to make a decision to take the Jeep to a mechanic who would lift the hood and conduct diagnostics in order to determine why the Jeep was no longer performing well. Often during this process of gathering additional data, the mechanic would discover other things that were not What Makes a Performance Indicator an Equity-Driven, High-Performance Indicator?