Many New York City schools call themselves "college prep" schools yet a surprising number of high schools don't offer the courses needed to prepare students for college. Unfortunately many students often don't find that out until after they are enrolled. It's not easy for parents and students to find out which schools offer college track courses such as chemistry, physics or pre-calculus. Course offerings are not listed in the high school directory or on a school's Progress Report.

Insideschools and the Center for New York City Affairs are developing a new high school score card (PDF) called Inside Stats. Clara Hemphill presented the proposed scorecard at June 28 forum at the New School. Inside Stats will mine existing Education Department data, from school Progress Reports and Learning Environment Surveys, to offer a more complete picture of high schools.

Philissa Cramer at GothamSchools has a thorough recap of the event. You can watch the panel discussion below and hop over to ustream.tv for Hemphill's presentation. 

We live-tweeted highlights from @insideschools under #NYCschools.

We plan to continue to tweak the score card so please give us your feedback in comments. What other data would you like to see?