School Wise Press SARC Services

SARC BITE 35 | JUNE 26 , 2006

Senate Bill 1510 Is Likely To Require SARCs by February 1

Senate Bill 1510 (Alquist, Democrat, San Jose) is quite likely to become law. And when it does, it will require district leaders to publish their schools accountability report cards much earlier in the school year. February 1 is the date we've heard is most likely to be written into law. This earlier reporting deadline will bring California closer to the practices of other states, and to the NCLB guidelines issued in September 2003 (see footnote 1).

But for those of you responsible for your district's annual accountability reports, this earlier deadline may not be so easy to meet. You will need to persuade many to join you in the race to the finish line. It will require that your principals pay attention to their writing in the first two months of school. It will require that your colleagues in the district office hustle to provide the data required for your schools' annual reports.

However, some legislators argue that an even earlier deadline is long overdue. After all, if parents are to compare schools in a moment that matters, the information needs to be available to them at the start of the school year. This is when they are enrolling their five-year-old in kindergarten, or moving their kids from elementary to middle school, or from middle to high

In other states, SARCs are usually published by state departments of education, and handed to local districts to distribute during the first semester of school. For example, Indiana's state law specifies that the reports be published in the first two weeks of September (see footnote 2) Missouri, the show- me state, is a little more generous, allowing its state department of education until early December to post the reports

A CALENDAR AND A PLAN OF ACTION

While it may be difficult for your district to meet the Feb. 1 deadline, it is entirely possible to succeed if your leadership affirms that the annual accountability report is important and provides you with the resources you need to get the job done. Given that, School Wise Press has developed a SARC calendar to help you plan for the work ahead.

August. Ask principals to contribute their written commentary. They should be able to reference their schools' results from the spring 2006 test cycle and the most current Single School Plan for Student Achievement. Brief them on the CDE's SARC data requirements, or suggest that they review their reports from the previous year.

Review your AYP and schoolwide API data. Check with your assessment director now to make sure that the data matches your STAR test results at the school level.

Review your October 2005 CBEDS filing. The official CBEDS data is available on DataQuest and it will appear throughout your SARC for the 2005-2006 school year.

September. The CDE's SARC team plans to release its template this month. This is the earliest date it has ever been made available. Review the data as presented before distributing it to your leadership team and principals. You'll find new data calculated for you in the financial area of the report. The NCLB view of teachers is among the more sensitive matters. You can validate the results by cross-referencing to your Consolidated Application.

Gather the data you'll need for reporting factors only you possess at the district office. This includes suspensions and expulsions, special program enrollment (GATE, special education, and more), resource staff counts, and more.

October. Late in the month, have your HR director, instructional materials director, and facilities manager complete the SARC reporting required by the Williams legislation (teachers, textbooks, and facilities).

November. Have your Chief Business Officer (CBO) calculate school-level teacher salaries, and the school-by-school expenditures for the 2004-2005 fiscal year. Deriving these financials will probably be easier this year, since the Fiscal Services Division of the CDE is due to issue guidelines for these school-level calculations. Leave time for your leadership to review this information. It may have political consequences.

Its also a good idea to ask your CBO to roll-up the same calculations for the 2005-2006 fiscal year. Why not bring both years to your public so they can see how your school level financials are trending? (It is odd to find financial data in the SARC that lags a full school year behind all other facts in the report.)

By Thanksgiving break, your SARCs should be ready for internal review. The teacher data is especially thorny; so make sure that your HR director has sufficient time for a thorough review. Give your principals a chance to see the reports. They may want to modify what they've written when they see their words in the context of facts. You or your superintendent may want principals to comment on factual findings that stick out. (For example, if a middle school shows 45 suspensions for every 100 students, your principal should offer some explanation.)

December. You have two weeks before the Christmas break to round up everyone's comments and incorporate them into your final release. If you succeed at getting this work done quickly, you can have the final version of your SARCs posted online before the end of the year.

Producing your SARCs earlier may be a difficult feat for your team to accomplish. However, by reporting your schools' results faster, you're letting the public know that you welcome their interest, and respect their right to know.

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

School Wise Press Web site offers a digest of research on what parents want to know about schools. This work, done by KSA-Plus Communications, found that parents want reports published promptly, in executive summary and full form, both in print and online. This report is instructive reading for anyone responsible for accountability reporting.

See the Indiana State Department. of Educations Web site. Their home page features their schools' and districts' annual reports.

One Indiana school's report begins at this Web site page (follow links to many connections).

Public Advocates threatened to sue when the Riverside Unified School District did not post its accountability reports by the end of their school year.

Calculate the internal production cost of your SARCs by using this SARC cost calculator from School Wise Press.

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1: Report Cards, Title I, Part A: Non-Regulatory Guidance. U.S. Dept. of Education, September 2003. Section A-2: While States and LEAs have the flexibility to determine the exact time during the year when they will issue report cards, the best practice would be to issue report cards as early as possible, so that schools have critical information for improving instruction and parents have critical information to make decisions regarding public school choice and supplemental educational services options.

Footnote 2: See page 5 of Indiana's Standards, Assessment, School Improvement, and Accountability Law, Public Law 221.