In April, the CDE delivered a study of SARCs’ shortcomings to the legislature and the governor. The study included a series of focus groups in ten cities that included about 100 parents and educators. It also included a six-question telephone survey that posed this question:

“Have you ever seen a school accountability report card?”

The response: only seven percent were able to answer yes. This sorry state of affairs deserves discussion.

IS IT DUE TO PARENT DISINTEREST?

We’ve talked with district leaders all over the state. Sadly, too many believe that parents aren’t interested in SARCs. Superintendents and assistant superintendents tell us that no one reads them; no one asks for them in the district office; no one complains when they’re not available. Unfortunately, district and school leaders take this hunch to a dangerous conclusion: that the public isn’t really interested in schools’ vital signs.

Yet when we ask if leadership has evidence, they shrug. Despite the measurability of Web site readership, we have been able to find only a rare handful of districts that measure readership of SARCs online.

One of them, San Jose Unified, told us several years ago that the single most popular branch of their Web site was the SARC one. In a year, there were roughly 17,000 unique site visits to their SARCs. In a district with an enrollment at that time of about 33,000, their SARC readership was equal to about 50 unique site visits to SARCs per 100 enrollment.

To see San Jose USD’s way of presenting SARCs, visit their Web site.

To see their handsome handling of SARCs, take a look at Hoover Middle School’s 2006-2007 report.

Here at School Wise Press we started measuring report readership in July 2007. The results for our 100+ district clients are close to those of San Jose USD. In the eight months from July 2007 through February 2008, our clients racked up 170,900 reports read. This represents a median of 24 reports read per 100 of enrollment based on a combined enrollement of 713,600. If this pace of report reading activity remains constant from March through June, we will see an average of 36 reports read per 100 enrollment.

To see one of our client’s ways of leading their Web site visitors to SARCs, take a look at San Dieguito Union HSD’s Web site.

SARCs are featured prominently on the district’s home page. The SARC link takes the reader to a menu listing all schools in the district.

WHY DO SARCS GET READ BY SO MANY IN SOME DISTRICTS AND SO FEW IN OTHERS?

Naturally, communities differ in their citizens’ comfort with technology. Some communities are likely to be more “wired” than others. But don’t use this fact to explain away the 7-to-1 difference separating San Jose USD and the CDE-sponsored phone survey of SARC usage statewide. One of the leading surveys of the public’s use of the Internet was conducted by the Pew Research Center in the spring of 2006. Their conclusion: on average, 73 percent of Americans are Internet users.

As publishers, we believe that the reason for San Jose USD’s success and the success of our clients is in the quality of the presentation. Quality has several dimensions.

Design is the first thing your reader sees when they encounter a book, a newspaper, or an annual report. How does it look? Does it look like the publisher wants you to read it? Is it inviting? Design is a craft and an art. It requires skill and education as well as creative judgment.

Editorial judgment is the second thing your reader encounters. What comes first in the report? How is it structured or ordered? Are there “handles” on information (table of contents, head and subhead structure)? What gets emphasized and de-emphasized? What factors deserve the lion’s share of the page count?

Writing quality is the third thing your reader experiences. Clear writing, free of technical terms and education jargon, goes a long way toward bringing your public your way. When your principals use the active voice, factual descriptions, and a candid tone, their writing builds trust.

DO PARENTS WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SCHOOLS?

When parents are clamoring to find meaningful evidence that their neighborhood school is okay, one would expect that SARCs would be read by at least half of those parents with children in schools. Hungry people don’t leave food on the table. Parents are hungry for what SARCs promise to deliver. If SARCs don’t deliver the meal parents are seeking, perhaps one should ask if the form and content of the SARC itself is to blame.

In the last ten years since the passage of the Public School Accountability Act became law, citizens have clamored to learn more about their schools. There is ample evidence for this claim. Both Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report have launched very successful annual issues that recognize the best high schools in the country. The articles in those magazines remain on the list of most emailed stories for weeks after their publication dates. These issues are mirrored by regional monthlies in California and other states, which dedicate cover issues to the best schools in their region.

Books on the topic of choosing schools are now in print. Among them are Bryan and Emily Hassel’s Picky Parent’s Guides. They’ve created an entire series, based on this concept, featuring grade-level specific editions.

If you’re still not convinced, see the research on this, “Reporting Results: What the Public Wants to Know,” published by KSA-Plus in 1998. It is an eye-opening challenge to every district and school leader who thinks parents don’t care to know how their schools are doing.

ACCESSIBILITY MEANS MORE THAN “BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME”

The final link in the successful SARC story of districts like San Jose USD is thoughtful, consistent messaging that schools’ annual reports are available. They publish short reports. They let parents know about them not just once but many times during the year. They link their SARCs clearly from the home page of their Web site.

In our experience, accessibility for many School Wise Press clients means the following:

• Printing a one-page summary report in September and giving it to parents at Back-to-School Nights or parent-teacher conferences

• Mailing that one-page report along with first-semester report cards

• Linking SARCs front and center on the district’s home page and on each school’s Web page (parents pay most attention to information available directly from their children’s school)

• Referring to SARCs as annual reports, never using the acronym S-A-R-C, which is insider jargon

• Putting a literature rack in the district’s reception area, filled with SARCs or summary reports for parents to take when they come in to enroll their children in school

• Referring to the SARC in the principal’s newsletter during the year

• Reviewing the SARC with the PTA or parents’ association.

Finally, we monitor online readership of our clients’ SARCs and help them interpret the numbers. We provide that data at the school level as well as for the district overall. We also let districts know their standings among our 100+ clients so they have a relative measure of distribution effectiveness.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. You can boost your SARCs’ effectiveness, too. Print summaries of your schools’ vital statistics and have them ready for distribution when school opens. Count how many your principals distribute. Count your Web site readership of SARCs. Use these figures as a benchmark and try to improve next year.

2. Aim to reduce your cost per report read. View SARCs as an investment in your public’s knowledge of your schools, not a cost. Dividing your cost by the total number of reports distributed and read gives you a way to keep track of the bang you are getting for your district’s bucks.

3. Survey your principals and ask them if they put your SARCs to work. This report should be on the table when the School Site Council meets to revise its Single School Plan for Student Achievement. Is it useful? If so, to whom? Who finds it less useful? Why? Does staff discuss it?

4. Survey your parents. A telephone sampling of 100 households will give you a reasonable estimate of how many parents (a) see their schools’ SARC, (b) read their schools’ SARC, (c) use it, and, (d) if so, for what purposes.

REFERENCES
San Jose USD’s Web site
San Dieguito Union HSD’s Web site
The Pew Internet and American Life Project
The Pew Report on Internet Penetration and Impact
San Diego Monthly, July 2006 issue, "Top Schools"
New York Times, July 2, 2008, "Students, Teachers and Parents Weigh In on State of the Schools."
Picky Parents Guides on Amazon.com

BACK TO TOP | ARCHIVE INDEX | SUBSCRIBE TO "SARC BITES"