School Wise Press SARC Services

SARC BITE 31 | APRIL 8 , 2005

Self-Reporting of School Results is Both a Burden and a Gift

At about this time every year, district leaders and their staffs either grumble and grump, or sigh in resignation as they finish the round-up of the words and numbers that are intended to become their schools' annual accountability reports. Those sighs may originate from a philosophical reflection. You may ask yourself, "Is this a waste of my time?" "Does anyone really read these things?" "Why do we do this, anyway?" Or the grumbling may issue from a more practical perspective. " I'd rather be training teachers." "I should really be screening providers of supplemental ed services." "I need to get my budget finished." Few find satisfaction when the roundup is done.

Like a cattle drive, it's a long ride. Three months for some. Six months for others. And because of the Williams legislation, it just got longer. Most time-consuming for you in the district office is herding principals to write their parts. You who are SARC liaisons can be seen cajoling, persuading, and pleading with principals to focus for the two to four hours needed to finish the task. You give their writing a once-over to make sure no one has committed unforgivable crimes against the English language (or made claims unsupported by the facts). Then you tie 'em up, bring 'em down, brand 'em, and steer those frisky four-legged text blocks into the pen.

But there's another herd of steers for you to drive home: data longhorns. The good folks at the CDE have already done their part to make your job easier by bringing one herd into the corral: testing, API, AYP, some student and teacher data, and, for high schools, a bunch of data on A.P. and A-G courses. Those tough animals are already branded and tagged. However, the remaining task you face is no mean feat. Suspension and expulsion events need to be tallied. Textbooks for every core class need to be detailed and counted to see if theres one for each student. Teachers misassigned and out-of-field need to be accounted for. (We thought that's what PAIF was for.) Teacher vacancies are squirmy critters that resist measuring. And facilities facts now merit greater care, noting signs of disrepair, danger, and decay.

So in case all this has got you complaining, here is one reason to count your blessings. You have the freedom (along with the responsibility) to report results about your schools yourself. You write what you want. You design your own presentation. Your colleagues in other states don't have it so lucky. Their state departments of education wouldn't dream of giving districts the freedom to report on their own schools. The bias of self-interest colors those with the best of intentions. And the time spent by locals in writing their own school annual reports is far too costly for most state education leaders to consider.

In Ohio, the creators of their state-produced school and district reports mince no words. Schools and districts get stamped with a brand, such as Academic Emergency, Academic Watch, Continuous Improvement, Effective, or Excellent. Those words appear in 36-point type, right on the cover page, along with the news of the schools Program Improvement status, and whether the parent can move their child to a new school or seek free tutoring. Here's a sample for Collingwood High in Cleveland. [PDF file]

In Colorado, the state department folks created a straightforward, six-panel report that, like Ohio's, brands the schools with a stamp ranging from Excellent to Unsatisfactory. Their reports offer no room for local narrative or principals' comments. Its just the facts, well designed and clearly presented. This format has been praised in high places, among them the Council of Chief State School Officers. Here is the report for Horace Mann Middle School in Denver. [PDF file]

In New York, the regents who govern the states schools have created a 14-page technical report that allows little room for district modification. Only in New York City does the district take command of page one, allowing principals to introduce four modest paragraphs. But turn to page two, and you're in the deep end, swimming in tables as technical as a log table in the back of a trigonometry text. Here's a typical report, showing Langston Hughes School (P.S. 233) in New York City.

TOUGHER ACCOUNTABILITY STANDARDS OUTSIDE THE CASTLE OF K-12

The trend everywhere is toward greater scrutiny of those who hold the public trust. Private corporations are learning to live with Sarbanes-Oxley, the tougher disclosure law that Congress passed on the heels of the Enron, WorldCom, and Adelphia scandals.

Charitable organizations are now hiring auditors to certify that their self-reported financial activity adheres to their declared mission, that funds you donate to children orphaned by the tsunami really reach the victims. This requires more than conventional financial audits. It takes field audits of warehouses. It requires interviews with truck drivers, import-export agents, and grant recipients themselves. Major charities are no longer relying on self-audits or on financial auditors, but instead are turning to an outside firm, Social Accountability International (SAI) to perform this service. SAI has inspected 570 facilities in 45 countries. According to a March 9 article in the Wall Street Journal, charities seeking SAIs seal of approval also have to demonstrate that their directors are free of conflicts of interest, and that their advertising makes no false claims. If they have codes of conduct, SAI verifies that they have lived up to them. For more and more charities, dependent entirely on the public's trust, relying solely on their own claims that they are worthy is no longer sufficient.

Garment and shoe manufacturers like Nike are hiring eco-auditors from advocacy organizations to certify that their clothes are assembled in humane workplaces, where pay and working conditions are decent, and where union rights are respected.

Even hospitals are being pushed to disclose their rates of infection. Four states -- Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and Missour -- have passed laws requiring these disclosures. The Consumer Union is pushing for this in more states, and asking outside agencies to audit hospitals claims. With life-and-death decisions riding in the balance, who would argue that patients don't deserve facts that have been validated by third-party agencies?

WHAT SCHOOL DISTRICTS MAY FACE

The public scrutiny you face in the school world is only likely to get tougher. This is simply a reminder of the high value of the trust your public depends upon. For evidence of this, look no farther than the Williams requirements to disclose more about teachers, textbooks, and facilities. Not only are you required to report these new facts in your schools annual reports. If you are in an API decile 1, 2 or 3 school, you are facing visits by inspection teams from your county office of education. Those teams will be looking at purchase records of textbooks, counting textbooks in classrooms, examining your teachers' credentials and assignment records, and then validating that your claims in your SARCs are accurate and complete.

In the future, districts may face tougher scrutiny of your district's reported financial condition. The FCMAT fellows are in more demand than ever, and they are finding that as many as one-fourth of the state's school boards should not be issuing anything more than a qualified budget. The state's precarious financial condition is sure to strain those districts whose books are not in order. Given the public interest in school districts financial solidity, more active review by either FCMAT or county offices may not be far away.

If enough districts dont satisfy the county office and CCR reviews of their SARCs, legislators may decide to unburden district leaders of the right to self-report, handing the full responsibility to the state department of education. Missouri has a bill pending to do just that. Nevada's legislators moved in that direction more than a year ago. If that were to become the status quo here in California, would you be relieved or disappointed?

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Get ahead of the wave. Prepare now to report results fully. We are in the post-Enron world where doubt and skepticism are well deserved. Get used to it, and then get ahead of it.

2. Appreciate the opportunity to describe your results as you see them, and make the most of it. Don't miss the chance to explain what your results mean to the public that's reading them.

3. Be careful what you wish for. If, in a private moment, you find yourself wishing for the CDE to handle your entire annual report for you, you may want to give equal time to appreciating the freedom you have to interpret, explain, and report your results the way you see them.

4. Budget for reporting results. If you don't budget for reporting results well, you'll be stuck with reporting them poorly. And that may cost you the next time you ask your voters to approve a parcel tax or a bond measure.