SARC BITE 18 | NOVEMBER 26, 2003

CDE Releases New SARC Guidelines

Last week, the California Department of Education's (CDE) Office of Policy and Evaluation released the first part of its new data guidelines. This is the first of three components of their accountability reporting program. Still to come — and expected any day now — is the technical document known as the template and a policy memo explaining the revisions.

Read the new data guidelines and more information on accountability reporting from the CDE.

MORE COMPLEXITY, MORE DATA

The new guidelines require school districts to report more data than last year -- 50 items of data compared to last year's required 36 items.

Also worth noting is NCLB's influence. The CDE has been working to combine federal reporting requirements into the California reporting program. You'll see this reflected in new definitions of dropouts, and in an official graduation rate for high schools. Schools are required to report on the new Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), as well as their Title I facts and figures. Note that Title I schools are under the NCLB hammer if they don't make their AYP goals two years in a row. In addition, there are items for which no definitions have yet been set. Highly qualified teachers, for example, awaits the state board's action.

Another change: Data about your school district will be interlaced with data about individual schools. This is the CDE's way of meeting the NCLB requirement of a district accountability report. But because it mingles facts about a school with facts that are districtwide, this is far from simple.

CONSEQUENCES OF NEW DEFINITIONS

The consequence of these new guidelines on your final reports will be evident in your page count. It is likely that districts using the CDE template will produce a report that is longer. When printed, it may reach 14 pages in length. It will also be a report that is more complex than before, with conflicting measures of progress defined in one way by California (via the Academic Performance Index), and in another way by the U.S. Dept. of Education (via AYP).

The unfortunate and avoidable consequence of more laws and increasingly detailed disclosures is that the information meant to be shared with the pubic is less clear, and the report is even farther from its founders original intent. Those district leaders who want to remain true to the spirit of the law will have to do more than fill in the squares of the daunting CDE template.