School Wise Press SARC Services

SARC BITE 11 | FEBRUARY 5, 2003

What It Takes to Make Your SARCs Legal

Those of you shouldering responsibility for accountability reporting have a maze of laws to understand. The legal goal is, of course, that state of grace known as "compliance." What does it really take to get there?

It takes more than filling in the blanks in the CDEs data delivery system that has come to be known as the "SARC template." Meeting the standard of law — both federal and state — means meeting four tests:

1. Is your SARC complete, including all required data and principals writing?

2. Is it understandable to parents?

3. Have you distributed it?

4. Has your board met to review and approve it?

The California law is only part of the standard you must meet. Federal law is the other, and it is not well understood.

WHAT MAKES A SARC COMPLETE?

The data that makes up an accountability report is vast. The CDE's data definitions list 38 items that must be there, and it provides a helping hand by putting most of them into the "template." But the data that remains includes suspensions and expulsions, enrollment in special programs, textbook availability, facilities facts, and more. Graduation rates are required by federal law, but are still not defined by the California State Board. Take a look at the state's data definitions.

The text that's required from principals falls into two dozen topics. It is a substantial amount of writing, usually taking 1,800 words, or a little more than seven pages (double-spaced).

But a complete SARC, however noble, is not a compliant accountability program. There is still more work to do.

WHAT MAKES A SARC UNDERSTANDABLE TO PARENTS?

Both state and federal law sets this standard. Federal law, taken from Section 1111(b)(1)(B) of No Child Left Behind, says:

"... report cards shall be concise, and presented in an understandable and uniform format and, to the extent practicable, provided in a language that parents can understand."

Concise? Yes. Indeed, federal legislators were smart enough to know that a full-scale data dump would be no help to parents. Concise reports are, indeed, being published by a number of leading districts, including Long Beach USD, Sacramento City School District, San Diego City Schools, as well as School Wise Press clients like Azusa, Gilroy, Monterey Peninsula West Contra Costa, Woodland USDs and sixty others.

Understandable? Sure. But making statistical data like this understandable requires clear writing, explanations, data visualizations, and sharp design. All these factors are absent from the CDE "template," but not accidentally.The CDE staff built the "template" to bring you back the data you need to build your reports. If you are using the CDE's data delivery system to deliver your reports, you should be adding to it, subtracting from it, retooling it to meet the requirement that it be "understandable."

A language that parents can understand? First, this means no jargon, no ed-speak. Second, this means that if more than 15 percent of your parents in any one school speak Spanish at home, that you need to provide Spanish translations of your SARCs for that school. This is a difficult requirement, no doubt. But it can be done either with face-to-face translators or with summary documents that pull out key factors for translation. The folks at Los Angeles Unified are doing full Spanish translations online, in fact.

See how San Leandro USD delivers their bilingual SARCs.

WHAT QUALIFIES AS "DISTRIBUTION"?

Here federal law is much more explicit than state law. Federal law says the following in Section 1111(h)2(e) of No Child Left Behind:

"Local education agencies shall 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."

"Dissemination" as NCLB defines it can only be realized when you print reports and either mail them or send them home with students. Your SARCs must also be routed to your schools. Some practical and frugal suggestions. Some districts mail their SARCs with student report cards. Others insert them in school-to-home newsletters. Others give them to parents at Back-to-School Nights or Open Houses. Since the parent handbook is also a "must have" for parents, why not distribute SARCs along with handbooks? Summary reports, again, offer you the cost-savings of printing and mailing fewer pages.

Libraries should be sent a full set of your schools SARCs. Each branch will need a set, of course. This is what the federal law meant by "public agencies," of course. And posting online is essential under California law. In our opinion, links to SARCs should be no more than one click from your home page. SARC links should all appear on one page, if you like, along with other reports that are school specific. Click on the link to see how Gilroy USD presented theirs.

WHAT DOES YOUR BOARD HAVE TO DO?

Your board must review your accountability reports annually, and vote their approval for the record. If your board is like most, your trustees probably promised "improved accountability" when they campaigned. Whatever form accountability might take, it certainly takes a tangible form in your SARC. Be prepared to have your board take your accountability report cards seriously.

One factor encouraging them is compliance monitoring. The CDE is bound by law (SB1632) to do just that. And federal officials are going to be bird-dogging NCLB with far more vigilance than prior administrations. Better safe than sorry.