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Case Study of Return on Investment in Accountability Reports Purpose of investing in accountability reporting Our primary purpose was to inform our public – parents, staff, teachers and community members of Hawthorne who vote and pay taxes -- of the state of their schools. Of course, we must do so in a manner which meets the legal requirements for accountability reports. But we also aim to communicate effectively. The reporting program was designed to be understandable to any citizen who could read a newspaper. Our goals were to provide reports that would serve the district in three ways: (a) to support recruitment of interdistrict transfer students, (b) to provide support for the marketing of schools to the public, and (c) provide compliance with state and federal laws governing accountability. Background facts about Wiseburn Elementary School District
The community of Hawthorne sits in the back yard of Los Angeles International Airport. The Wiseburn district is also adjacent to Inglewood USD and Los Angeles USD, two districts suffering from severe crowding. Wiseburn has negotiated interdistrict transfer agreements with both districts that have enabled it to recruit students to maintain a rising enrollment. This has been critical to Wiseburn’s financial stability, enabling it to preserve staff and programs through volatile times, and times of cutbacks. Wiseburn received just $6,790 per ADA in the 2005-2006 school year, which is $439 less than the average elementary school district in the state. This makes enrollment growth all the more crucial to the financial stability of the district. We researched what parents want to know about schools
School Wise Press brought us two pieces of research. California specific research from the University of California, Los Angeles law school (see enclosed) harshly criticized the state’s reporting format for being unnecessarily complex, obtuse, and harder to understand than the IRS instructions for the alternative minimum tax. They used technical measures of linguistic complexity as part of their assessment. They took this to heart, and applied the same metrics to our own reports. They calibrated our text complexity at the same level as USA TODAY. And we adjusted our writing through several iterations until we reached that level of simplicity in sentence structure and vocabulary. Secondly, School Wise Press also relied on research from KSA-Plus Communications to shape accountability reports that met the expectations of the target audience, parents. The research calls for four main features when reporting results. Parents want reports that are brief. School Wise Press published reports that are one-page in length, accompanied by more complete reports that met state and federal laws. We relied on KSA-Plus’s research to determine the factors that belonged in the one-page reports. Parents want reports in a timely fashion. School Wise Press designed a just-in-time publishing program which takes the vital information available from the state department of education that was available by the end of August, and publishes it in Fact Sheets by mid-September. Parents want reports that are accessible. In Hawthorne’s community, where half of those 5 years and older spoke a language other than English at home, this means bilingual Spanish/English reporting, available online and in print. School Wise Press provided reports in Spanish and English. In addition, the reports were available both online and in print. Short reports were printed for all parents and distributed close to the Back-to-School Nights held in the last half of September. Parents want more detailed information but only in some areas. Longer versions of accountability reports were printed on demand, due to cost consequences. Full-length reports ran 24-to-28 pages in length. Our target audience Citizens of Hawthorne, parents with children in school, parents about to enroll their children in school, parents with children in adjacent districts who were looking for new schools, realtors and local decision-influencers were all primary audience members. Secondary audience members included staff, especially teachers, site council leaders and PTA/PTO active members and school board members. These reports are also used by site-based planning teams. Our goals and how we measured them The first measurable goal was to construct reports that could be understandable to everyone, even those parents whose education was lower than the average for California. About 67 percent of Hawthorne adults 25 and older had graduated from high school, according to Census data from the Year 2000. This is about 10 percent less than the average California community. Only 13 percent of Hawthorne’s adults had graduated from college with a B.A. or higher, half the rate for the average community in the state.
Because the short Fact Sheet was understandable to even those with less than a 9th grade education, we believe we accomplished this first goal. Our second goal was to support the district’s marketing of schools. This was the most strategic goal, one which the district counted on for stability in its funding base. This goal, in the opinion of Supt. Don Brann, was met. But it was difficult to quantify. We examined the cost of surveying parents, but the cost of this survey was prohibitive. Our third measurable goal was to enable the district leadership to reach the target audiences. We were able to measure this by estimating the quantity of printed reports distributed, and by estimating the number of unique site visitors to the accountability reports online. Our goal was to enable the district to distribute 3,000 reports (enrollment was 2,156) for less than 20 cents per report. And we also aimed to enable the district to reach an additional 2,000 people by means of its website. Our evaluation First, we reached parents and the public with reports they could comprehend. We used technical text analysis tools to evaluate the linguistic complexity of our documents. We determined the Fact Sheet to require a seventh grade education to comprehend. It scored at about the same level of linguistic complexity as the Christian Science Monitor newspaper. Based on this scoring, we believe the Fact Sheet report to be understandable to almost every citizen. The longer document, the school accountability report, however, scores at a 10th grade level of linguistic complexity. This made the document hard to comprehend for about 15-20 percent, the least educated portion of this community. For this reason, we encouraged the district to provide staff at the school level to explain the report and answer any questions parents might have. Second, we reached parents at a cost lower than our target goal: 20 cents per report. By printing reports just one-page in length, and using a low-cost, high-speed Docutech printing process, School Wise Press was able to produce reports at 14 cents per report, printed in blue and black on both sides of an 8.5” x 14.0” sheet. Principals distributed printed reports by sending them home with students in their backpacks, and by making them available at Back-to-School Nights. Note that 782 reports were read in the eight months from July 2007 through February 2008, according to our Web metrics. This amounts to 36 reports read per 100 enrollment. This is nearly 1.5 times the median for School Wise Press’s 102 clients – 23 reports read per 100 enrollment. If Wiseburn’s statistics were projected over a 12 month period, we’d expect about 53 reports read per 100 enrollment. Third, we reached parents considering enrolling their kids through interdistrict transfer. The marketing efforts of the district included many ways of conveying the message: “Our doors are open and our schools are great. Come see for yourself.”
Fact Sheets were left behind as a promotion piece. Some were distributed inside a more complete district booklet that included a pocket in the back, designed to hold all schools’ Fact Sheets. Most importantly, the district met its goals of growing new enrollments by 10 percent this 2007-08 school year. This is the year these accountability reports were first able to affect enrollment. They were published and used in the 2006-07 school year, to gain new enrollments for the 2007-08 school year. Here are the new enrollment patterns for the last three years:
New enrollments now represent 40 percent of all new students enrolled in the district. Fourth, the project made principals happy. It was a way for them to add their view of their schools’ vital signs to a well-crafted report. Their words were copyedited by publishing professionals, so they were confident that their ideas were well expressed. They were able to point to their accomplishments, without having the burden of building the data argument that supports their claims. —Supt. Don Brann, May 2008
© Copyright 2008, Publishing 20/20. All rights reserved. |
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