Monitoring Compliance

Data elements: The CDE's data definitions for all 50 items are adhered to with care by our staff. In addition, we provide additional guidance to our clients in those areas where the CDE's guidelines are not fully formed: buildings and facilities, textbook availability, school safety and crimes, library resources, site expenditures. We have also added a few items that NCLB call for that are not mandatory in California. These include attendance, more specific teacher credentials, and crimes on campus.

Principals' writing: Only California law, not federal, requires principals to describe about a dozen features of their schools. We assist principals by providing a workbook complete with guidance and sample text that should enable them to walk through this writing assignment in two to four hours. Our editors will review, and if needed, revise the writing principals provide, adding polish and clarity. We also offer a phone interview to those districts who'd rather not ask their principals to write at all. Some of our programs offer abbreviated approaches to principals' writing. Program C requires one-third as much as Programs A and B. Programs D and E require no writing from principals at all.

Dissemination: State and federal law call for disseminating accountability reports. State law emphasizes web-based publishing, while federal law states that printing and distributing copies to all parents is required. We make it easy for districts to satisfy both requirements by creating SARCs in two summary formats that are easy and inexpensive to print and mail. We also offer distribution services that bundle printed reports into binder sets, an ideal format for libraries and city government. In addition, we can create an accessible table-of-contents page that makes it easy for outside agencies to link their websites to your SARCs, satisfying the public agency dissemination requirement of NCLB at low cost.

Understandability: The NCLB provision for reports that are understandable is mirrored by the California Education Code. This is, of course, also a practical concern for any district leaders who expect a return on their investment in their public's knowledge of their schools. Reports that aim only to formally comply with the laws are not likely to communicate effectively. Our investment in design and writing that work, and our reliance on research, have led us to our particular way of guiding the reader. We explain and interpret the facts; only rarely do we simply present them. Often we'll use hypertext links like footnotes to carry the reader to supplementary information or definitions.

Language equity: Both NCLB and the California Education Code call for districts to provide their parents reports in their home language. Section 48985 of the Education Code specifies that when 15 percent of the students in a school have parents who speak a different language at home, many documents should be translated into that second language. We provide for full Spanish language translation of all reports included in each SARC program. No matter whether the report appears online or in print, in full or in brief, it appears in English and Spanish. We have translated all supporting materials—glossaries, online pop-up screens, backgrounders—into Spanish. For bilingual editions in other languages, please call us for a quote.

Monitoring Compliance

Two parts of the California Department of Education share the responsibility of compliance monitoring. The Office of Policy and Evaluation's SARC unit has the responsibility, by law, for checking on districts' accountability reporting practices. They set the data definitions, and they write the policies. They issue the template for delivering live data back to districts. So they are well prepared to serve notice to superintendents when a district's SARC reporting falls short. Common problems they see include posting reports late, incomplete reports, and failing to use data definitions correctly. Questions can be directed to Carlos Rivera. His email address is sarc@cde.ca.gov.

The second group that will review your SARCs is the Categorical Program Monitoring group. Their reviews, now scheduled every four years, include a series of tests that check for translation quality, presence of translated SARCs in the right schools, timely postings, dissemination and understandability requirements, Williams facility reporting, as well as meeting the state's data definitions. For further information, take a look at the CDE's Web site for Categorical Program Monitoring.