And you can view them here. Seattle Public Schools says the reports—being issued for the first time—seeks to increase transparency and start a conversation between parents and the district. They will include a school's "academic growth, student climate, accountability, family and staff engagement, and overall school performance."

Parents will be able to ask questions at a series of regional community meetings starting Nov. 29 (.pdf). "I commend school district leadership for telling us the truth about which schools are failing our children," said Council Member Tim Burgess, who chairs the City Council’s Public Safety and Education Committee, in a statement today. "We can only make progress when we acknowledge what’s not working."

The district has grouped schools based on their performance, rating them on a level of one to five, with one being the lowest. District spokesperson Patti Spencer said that this was not done to put "negative labels on any school," but to help them improve by looking at how they were performing district-wide.

However, if schools fail to improve after three years, there will be consequences, the most draconian of which will be removing the principal and staff.

Schools at the absolute bottom (Level 1) include Dearborn Park, Dunlap, Emerson, Gatzert, Hawthorn, Highland Park, Leschi, Madrone K-8, Martin Luther King Jr., Northgate, Roxhill, and West Seattle elementary schools.

Schools at the very top (Level 5) include Cathrine Blaine K-8, Bagley, Coe, Hay, Lafayette, Loyal Heights, McGilvra, North Beach, Schmitz Park, Thorton Creek, View Ridge, and Wedgwood elementaries.

No high schools were listed at Level 1 or Level 5. Garfield and Roosevelt were both listed as Level 4, while Ballard, Center School, Chief Sealth, Franklin, Nathan Hale, and Nova were at Level 3. Cleveland, Ingraham, Rainier Beach, and West Seattle came in at Level 2.

So if you are the parent of a child who goes to a low-performing school, are you supposed to run out of your house screaming in shock? No, says Spencer. Parents are already aware of how their child's school is doing thanks to No Child Left Behind's Adequate Yearly Progress report, so this information will help them understand the situation better, she says.

More on school reports after the jump

However, Seattle's school performance report is different from NCLB because it measures individual student growth, whereas NCLB only measures student performance.

There's more: Take a peek at the district's second annual scorecard, which shows that the district is on track for a lot of things it wants to achieve by 2013, except high school reading and math, reading scores for every grade except seventh and eighth, and the performance of repeat ninth graders, among others.

Also, watch out for Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson's State of the District address from Mercer Middle School tonight (.pdf).