SARC Reform Legislation Should Aim at the Parent Connection

ISSUE 76 | APRIL 12, 2007

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This initiative extends last year's attempts to fix a SARC wagon that is sagging under the weight of too much heavy cargo. Last year's bill met with the Governor's veto. His reason: the reforms did not go far enough. Before the Governor and legislators push more ambitious reforms, this owl has a few suggestions to offer.

Wiser public policy would be more likely to result if legislators read three research papers before they begin the wrestling match of lawmaking: (a) the Appleseed Network's report on the information bridge to parents; (b) the KSA-Plus study of what parents want to know about schools; and (c) the National Adult Literacy Study. These three would help anchor the debate to the practical questions at hand: "If a parent cannot make sense of a school's annual report, what good is it?"

APPLESEED NETWORK REPORT, "IT TAKES A PARENT"

The Appleseed Network report, "It Takes a Parent: Recommendations Regarding the Vital Role of Parents and Guardians in Achieving Student and School Success," appeared in the fall of 2006. This study is the result of an interesting group of co-authors: scholars from Columbia Teachers college, the accounting and consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers. and Appleseed Network, an advocacy and public interest law group. Their focus on the levers of public policy that could improve educational outcomes, led them to examine parent engagement. They looked at two decades of experiments in promoting public engagement. This led them, in turn, to take a hard look at the barriers to success. Their first conclusion: Too many parents fail to receive clear and timely information about their children and their schools. Their recommendation:

"States, districts and schools must provide meaningful, understandable and timely information to parents regarding key school and student performance data."

Their research was drawn from 27 focus groups they convened in the first half of 2006. Lack of data was not often the problem. One Texas educator described the problem to be not a lack of data, but the lack of a way to extract simple, clear, consistent and valued messages for the parents to understand all the data. The second issue parents raised was timeliness.

These are both hot issues for California's accountability reports. Effective reporting must be both understandable and timely. Indeed, these are compliance points in state law (EC 33126) and in NCLB (Section 1111h). And "understandability" rests on district leaders explaining what the data means. This requires departing from the years-long tradition of dumping data into tables and walking away. It requires commitment to a point of view.

Read the Appleseed report.

This owl heard the report's author, Edwin Darden, speak at the National School Boards Association conference mid-April. The dialogue was hot, indicating that board members believe the Appleseed Network is onto something.

KSA-PLUS: WHAT PARENTS WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SCHOOLS

This survey of parents and educators by KSA-Plus Communications is the single best starting point for researching what parents want to know about schools. Their work in 1999, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust and published in Education Week, featured ten recommendations.

The study, titled "Reporting Results," summarizes the findings of seven focus groups with parents, citizens and educators in five states. The researchers asked participants not just what they want to know about schools, but how much information they desire, where they expect to find it, when they want the facts, and the format they prefer.

Especially interesting was that school safety and crime reporting were ranked top among 21 items by both educators and parents. Facts about teachers came second. Test scores were sixth in importance for parents. Focus group participants all favored concise reports. Yet all wanted longer reports available on demand.

These recommendations are likely to be familiar to those of you responsible for accountability reporting. But for those about to take a whack at the laws that shape SARCs, these insights could help create better public policy

NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF ADULT LITERACY

This fascinating 2003 study measured the English literacy of American adults in three areas: document literacy, quantitative literacy and prose literacy. In reading both the full report, and the book length description of the rubrics used in the study, I was impressed with the degree to which many adults have to struggle just to make sense of everyday things: reading bus schedules, filling in job applications, following medical precautions that accompany pills from the pharmacy, calculating tips, figuring out the simplest of tax forms (the 1040-EZ).

Spanish speaking subjects in this study were far less literate in all three categories. To add to this initial bad news, the scores for Spanish speakers dropped dramatically in the eleven years between the 1992 and 2003 administrations of the study. Clearly, reaching parents who are both less literate and Spanish speakers requires a different approach.

Take a look at an abstract of the report. And read the US Dept. of Education's press release from December 2005.

RECOMMENDATIONS

You and your leadership have legislative advocates inside many organizations. Why not ask them to take a serious look at the five SARC related bills now in committee in the Assembly and the Senate. Between ACSA, SSDA and CSBA, lobbyists could flex their muscles, and move these pending SARC related bills toward a saner, smarter solution. Here are several directions which merit consideration.

1. Set a standard for "understandability." If legislators are to do their part, they could advance the cause of effective reporting by defining "understandable" in unambiguous terms. There are many ways to do so. Measures of linguistic complexity have been used by textbook publishers and editors for years. But this would not address the other two dimensions of complexity: quantitative and document literacy. They could define a benchmark for understandability using the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. Or they could recommend that SARCs require no more than an eighth grade education to understand half the content of the report.

2. Fund SARCs. If legislators continue to require that SARCs be understandable while also requiring that districts report more than 60 data and text items, lawmakers and those responsible for policy should provide the funding that would make success possible. Money matters. If the Dept. of Finance were to support funding SARCs at a reasonable flat rate per site, and start reimbursing districts promptly for their efforts, it would simplify the filing of claims, and save districts money.

3. Unburden Principals. Streamlining SARCs would be more feasible if the writing requirement imposed on principals were either reduced or eliminated. The cost of paying principals to create that writing is high. The cost of translating that text, which should be unique to each SARC, is even higher. For reference, California is one of the few states that requires any writing from site leadership.

REFERENCES

Education Week news story about the Appleseed Networks report, "It Takes A Parent." (Nov., 2006)

Appleseed Network report, "It Takes A Parent."

National Adult Literacy Study, 2003. The National Center for Education Statistics.

Synposis of "Reporting Results," by KSA Plus Communications, as it appears on the School Wise Press Web site.

"Reporting Results," full report, by KSA Plus Communications, 1999.

SB759 (Alquist)

AB1015 (Brownley)

AB1061 (Mullin)

SB802 (Romero)

SB835 (Scott)

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