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 Creating Quality SARCs:
An Interview with Steve Rees, Founder, Editor and Publisher of School Wise Press
by
Solange Castro Belcher
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Steve Rees speaks to Teaching to Change LA about the importance of school reports that accurately and clearly reflect the conditions of California schools. Steve Rees is founder, editor and publisher of School Wise Press, a company that publishes facts about schools and creates school reports for school districts.
"The SARCs that we have seen are either ”missing in action,” because schools don’t publish them, or of a low quality. SARCS tend to be poorly written, factually inaccurate, filled with statistical errors that would cause a high school algebra teacher to flunk a student, and they are largely an embarrassment to the educators that create them."
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TCLA: Why did School Wise press decide to do work on SARCs?
SR: It’s not a coincidence that we started to do this in the 1st year of the Davis Administration. He passed the Public School Accountability Act (http://www.cde.ca.gov/psaa/) which woke up a lot of school district leaders. The public now had higher expectations of what the public servants and school systems owed them, and certainly having facts about their schools was at the beginning of their process.
As part of a public engagement project underwritten by the Danforth foundation, the San Jose Unified School District surveyed attitudes of parents, students, and teachers. In 1999 the District decided to invest in professional accountability reporting and hired us. In the background was their plan to put a bond measure of 350 million dollars on the ballot. The school accountability reports were a way to gain the public’s trust.
TCLA: What do you see as the purpose of SARCs?
SR: SARCs were originally a small part of a 1988 act calling on districts to create an annual report to the schools they served. These reports were intended to make clear the critical measures of the health of these institutions. Because SARCs are part of the open government movement, the tone, the voice and the content of these reports are supposed to reflect the conditions of schools. However, the original purpose and spirit of the legislation was largely lost from 1988 to 1998 and most SARCs now resemble a church newsletter, at best, and, at worst, marketing hype. Most accountability report cards are very light on facts and hollow on philosophical assertions of the principal’s noble intentions.
TCLA: What is your impression of most SARCs you have seen?
SR: Let me describe those that we’ve seen and worked on. The SARCs that we have seen are either ”missing in action,” because schools don’t publish them, or are of a low quality. SARCS tend to be poorly written, factually inaccurate, filled with statistical errors that would cause a high school algebra teacher to flunk a student, and they are largely an embarrassment to the educators that create them. Some districts have set a higher standard and have attempted to report test results with some diligence. This is not an easy thing to do, since very few people agree on the meaning of education measures of progress. And if you think this is easy, try asking a high school principal what his graduation rate is. The California State Board can’t agree on any- graduation rate. Testing data is now reported based on what we call the Lake Wobegone standard, which is the percent of students above average. While this reveals some things that matter, it mainly conceals the more interesting ones. So given the complex nature of the thing they are reckoning with, even educators with the best intentions struggle to make sense of assessment results.
"Unlike California, federal law is clear in requiring schools to print and distribute these reports. As a result most California parents and teachers have never seen a school accountability report ever. This is outrageous!"
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TCLA: Where are the biggest gaps or missing data?
SR: There are gaps of several kinds. First of all, the facts about school buildings are badly specified in the California Department data definitions. There are school sites wherein 2/3 of their buildings may be portables and you would never learn that fact from reading a SARC. A school built to hold 1200 students could have 2,000 students enrolled and you would never know it was crowded. The second category of information that is lacking from these reports is informationabout the teachers that work there. This is probably the most important shortcoming of the law. In Indiana citizens can find out where their teachers went to school, when they graduated, their college major and the degree they attained. If I cared to find out the facts about my doctor, Kaiser is happy to inform me of all that and more. There’s a similar absence of professional facts about the principal of the school. By the way, nothing prohibits school district leaders from voluntarily disclosing these facts in their SARCS. Part of what we do as a publishing company is to urge our clients to meet the needs of the public in the fullest possible way and go beyond the basic requirements. A third gap i have already mentioned—in California, high school graduation rates are missing entirely. The fourth gap is not a gap of data, but a gap of compliance monitoring. California law is not clear on whether districts are required to print and distribute accountability reports. As a result, the Department of Education allows districts to post the documents on their web sites without printing them. Unlike California, federal law is clear in requiring schools to print and distribute these reports. As a result most California parents and teachers have never seen a school accountability report ever. This is outrageous!
"The latent power of accountability reporting is that they would enable parent to make choices with facts in their hands and not depend entirely on community rumor and reputations."
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TCLA: What are some SARCs that do a good job?
SR: A good example is the Report for Los Angeles Unified School District B. Two-thirds of the families in this district speak Spanish at home. Within a year of taking the reigns, Superintendent Judy Burton asked us to come in and create summary accountability reports in English and Spanish for each of her 65 schools. She agreed with our principle that a high level of candor is necessary about the things that need improvement in the schools such asthe facilities, the scarcity of text books, and more. Those reports were distributed in the spring of 2001, and we’ve been told that parents and principals appreciated having reports that they could be proud of.
TCLA: How would you like to see SARCs effecting change?
SR: It’s the pay off we would all hope for. I think the combination of the public sector choice laws that we’ve had since 1994 begin to free parents from the proverbial squeeze play. On the one side, the law that says your child must go to school until the age of 16 and on the other side, district administrators that say that your child will go to the school that they tell them to. Now federal law provides public sector choice for kids in schools that are not meeting adequate progress points. The latent power of accountability reporting is that they would enable parent to make choices with facts in their hands and not depend entirely on community rumor and reputations. And I think that if there is a hope in this, it is that public sector choice and quality information that is unbiased by self-reporting would help drive reform from below. And there is also another future to predict here which is that if school systems fail to elevate their disclosure reporting to professional level, the responsibility would be pre-empted by government agencies at higher levels to impose a truth in advertising sticker, somewhat similar to nutrition facts on the backs of food packages, and cancer warnings on the sides of cigarette packages.
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School Wise Press can be visited on the Web at