Federal law is stricter than California policies about distributing SARCs. The language of NCLB (see below) requires "disseminating" your accountability reports far and wide. Every parent must receive a copy. Every school must have copies. Your local public libraries should have copies. The law even calls for media reporters to have copies. And that's not all. Accountability reports have to be in an understandable and uniform format. (No longer can schools do their own thing.) "Understandable" is hardly the term one could use to describe the CDE's SARC template, which is the format of choice for too many California districts.

The exact language of Section 1111(h)(2)(F) follows below.

PUBLIC DISSEMINATION—The local educational agency shall, not later than the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year, unless the local educational agency has received a 1-year extension pursuant to subparagraph (A), publicly disseminate the information described in this paragraph to all schools in the school district served by the local educational agency and to all parents of students attending those schools in an understandable and uniform format and, to the extent practicable, provided in a language that the parents can understand, and make the information widely available through public means, such as posting on the Internet, distribution to the media, and distribution through public agencies, except that if a local educational agency issues a report card for all students, the local educational agency may include the information under this section as part of such report. [Emphasis added]

For a fuller explanation of the meaning of the federal dissemination requirements, please see this issue of our SARC BITES newsletter.