School Wise Press SARC Services

SARC BITE 24 | JUNE 18 , 2004

District Annual Reports: More Than an NCLB Compliance Exercise

Annual reports about your schools have been the law of the land here in California since 1988. In fact, this law favoring the citizen's right-to-know is part of the state Constitution. But it took federal law to bring district accountability reports to life in 2001, when NCLB took effect. Most districts are not yet getting these new reports off the ground. But those who have are reaping benefits of two kinds: better relations with their public (real PR) and a higher level of compliance with NCLB (good insurance).

THE CARROT: BETTER RELATIONS WITH YOUR PUBLIC

Take Kelseyville USD, whose chief business officer, Kathy Garrison, is in charge of both the district- and school-level accountability reports. Perhaps because she has worked in the K-12 world for just five years, she had a sense of what should be done that was less limited by tradition. When she saw Kelseyville's accountability reports, she saw many opportunities to improve them. "I actually think it's kind of fun," she told me. Then she added, "Well, people think I'm kind of crazy as a result." But finding pleasure in the work enables her to bring a sense of pride to the reports themselves. Take a look at their report.

To help your leadership team answer the public's questions, consider following Kelseyville's lead. Your community may have increasingly specific questions about district finances, for example: is the district's enrollment decline a real trend or an aberration; how do we pay our teachers and administrators compared to other districts; what is the cost of keeping a school site open. A financial section of your district accountability report could answer these questions, and more.

When districts face a more inquiring public, it is not necessarily a more critical one. Citizens — both voters and parents whose children are your customers — want to understand your key facts in order to make key decisions like where to live, who to elect to the school board, how to vote on your parcel tax proposals, and which school to enroll their children in. To arrive at intelligent answers to these questions, citizens require the kind of background knowledge that can't come just from the local newspaper. The best source should be you. And the most likely format for that information is an annual report about your district.

LEARNING FROM LIBRARIES' ANNUAL REPORTS

Other public agencies issue annual reports: libraries, park and recreation departments, water districts, public utilities. The library reports we've reviewed for Friends of the San Francisco Public Libraries are telling because they have such clear measures of a good year. To request a copy of their annual report (ask for the 2000-2001 report to see the way they measure results), send them an email.

How many people walk into libraries in a year? Into which branches do they walk most often? What is the cost per patron served? What is the ratio of the population served to the number of patrons, and the number of cardholders? Library annual reports look at circulation turns to measure the frequency with which patrons check out materials. More turns in general indicates greater utilization of the collection. More turns per patron indicate that the library's customers are using the collection more intensively. Materials that get used are materials worth investing in. Librarians are guiding their precious budget for acquisitions and periodicals where they know their patrons are busiest. At the end of the year, the library leadership knows where they stand, and how to plan for the years ahead: which branches to invest in, which branches to cut back, how to staff to provide access when it is most needed. By sharing this with their public, library leadership is able to defend their decisions and justify those rare moments when they turn to the voters for additional support.

Are you giving your public the same meaty information to chew on as this library system? Does your public learn when you've had a good year, or whether you've met your own goals for teacher recruitment? Does your public learn whether your students have met your district's reading and math test score goals, or is your public relegated to reading whether your schools simply met their state assigned API growth targets?

THE STICK: LOSS OF TITLE I FUNDS FOR VIOLATING NCLB

The law itself, and two sets of guidelines (December 2002 and September 2003), called clearly for districts to issue annual district-level accountability reports. California's Coordinate Compliance Review (CCR) Manual for 2003-04 school year also reinforces the requirement to publish this report. Why? Because the federal folks and CCR officials believe that if federal funds go to districts, then district leaders have an obligation to report results to citizens. This is not onerous, nor is this unreasonable. It is consistent with the principles of open government, transparency and candor that are encoded in the federal Freedom of Information Act and in California's own Public Records Act. It is also a legal obligation that districts sign when they agree to accept federal funds. You can read what you're required to include in the report itself by going to the NCLB law (Section 1111(h)) or the September 2003 guidelines. [Word document]

The specific content requirements go beyond reporting district averages about students, teachers and test scores. More interesting, NCLB requires that districts disclose where the most highly qualified teachers work. Unequal distribution of better prepared teachers is endemic in California, where districts long ago surrendered to teachers the right to choose where they work, based on seniority. The public is largely unaware of the consequences of this, and as a result, the policy question of who decides where teachers work is not yet in discussion in most districts.

NCLB also requires that districts list the schools that are in Program Improvement or Corrective Action. A respectable annual report would also include schools that are in Immediate Intervention/ Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) and High Priority School Grants (HPSG). This beats hiding the bad news, even if you believe it is undeserved.

NCLB's district report also must include a district-wide view of achievement gaps, something California's API report-by-cohorts already makes possible When this is viewed deeper, specifically at the curricular level, not only your public, but your staff may be surprised to see that boys and girls are not as close in their algebra and geometry scores as they are at their math scores in grades two through seven.

NCLB'S ACTION ORIENTED REQUIREMENTS

The more challenging side of NCLB's annual reporting requirements are actually in what you must do with them. The law itself, further detailed by the September 2003 guidelines, spells out that reports have to be:

· Disseminated, not by posting on your website alone, but by printing them and getting them in the hands of parents and staff, as well as public agencies like libraries;

· Understandable, a term which remains unfortunately undefined in the guidelines. Id suggest that this standard is, sadly, far from obvious, and unless districts aim to make their reports clear to any citizen capable of reading USA TODAY, the question may be settled by a judge instead.

· Equal access for Spanish speakers "to the extent practicable, in a language parents understand." This means creating annual reports in Spanish if 15 percent or more of your parents are Spanish speakers at home, according to the Education Code standard and the legal precedent, Honig vs. Comite de los Padres.

For more information on these requirements, go to this annotated excerpt from the U.S. Dept. of Education guidelines on accountability reporting. [PDF file]

There's no time like the present to get started. If your district hasnt yet budgeted for this report, now is the time to do so. Hopefully, the carrot provides you more incentive than the stick. Certainly protecting your district against losing Title I funds, and the opportunity to educate your public, especially as we prepare to enter yet another year of hard times, are sufficient incentive to commit your leadership to this much needed report.

RESOURCES:

See the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to read their 2004 reports on the state of each state's reporting of results. They focus on state level and school level reports. [PDF file]

The CCSSO guidelines on the nuts-and-bolts of accountability reporting is the single best how-to guide in print. Includes design and data recommendations. [PDF file]

The Indiana state department of education has won praise for their online reporting system, which includes district reports. Detail for each topic can be found by clicking blue hypertext links on this opening page. To see a sample for Gary, Indiana (made famous by "Music Man.")

Washington state has developed an online report that provides summary and detailed level results. They rely on a clear tab-based selection tool at the top of each screen to enable readers to decide what they want to see.