• The school districts that have met all requirements and earned a certificate are: Alpine, Box Elder, Cache County, Davis, Duchesne County, Granite, Jordan, Kane County, Logan City, Murray, Nebo, Salt Lake, Sevier, South Sanpete, Washington County, and Weber.
• While 16 districts are eligible now for a certificate, other districts can earn it on a rolling basis throughout this year.

Introduction

Parents and schools are better education partners when schools provide parents with access to curriculum information and parents effectively utilize it to support their students.

In April, Sutherland Institute announced the Partners in Learning Certificate project to recognize local school districts that excel at making their websites parent-friendly, specifically in how they share information about curriculum.

While public policy has an obvious place in creating better access to curriculum information, a lot can be accomplished by public recognition of what’s going well, attention to where challenges lie, and awareness of what more can be done by simple, often voluntary reforms.

The rubric and its purpose

To discover how well Utah’s school districts make this information accessible online, we created an eight-part rubric based on statutory requirements and other features useful to parents looking for information about the curriculum used in their child’s education.

The rubric was designed to capture a robust yet flexible approach to sharing curriculum information on a website, allowing districts to meet this standard in various ways.

The first rubric requirement is based on Utah Code 53G-4-402(27)(b)(3), which requires local school boards to include on the district’s website information about how to access the instructional material the district uses, which must be made “readily accessible and available for parents to view.” The statute is not specific about how this must be done, so websites were reviewed holistically. Some websites have written notices about how to access the information and/or whom to contact to learn more about the curriculum. Some offered dedicated curriculum webpages with detailed information (titles and links) about the curriculum or directory information for curriculum specialists in different areas. Many districts met this requirement, but without more explicit guidance from the mandate, it was achieved in a variety of ways.

Other rubric requirements capture preferred, but not state-mandated, features that could assist parents. Two requirements focused on district policy: whether they had an online policy for access to learning materials and whether it was easily accessible (which we define as three clicks from the homepage). Almost all districts met these with ease.

Four requirements for the certificate focused on whether districts offered a dedicated tab or webpage that hosts curriculum information, including whether it was well-organized, had no broken links, and was easily accessible (within three clicks from the homepage). Most districts have a dedicated curriculum webpage, but there were differences in how well they were designed and maintained.

The final requirement looked at whether Canvas was visible on the homepage. Given the prevalence of Canvas as a learning management system across the state, it makes sense for parents’ access to this platform to be as easy as possible. Most districts hosted a link to Canvas on the homepage.

Districts that earned a Partners in Learning Certificate

After announcing our project, conducting a series of outreach to districts, and reviewing the websites, we found that 16 districts met all categories and earned a Partners in Learning Certificate.

The school districts that have met all requirements and earned a certificate are: Alpine, Box Elder, Cache County, Davis, Duchesne County, Granite, Jordan, Kane County, Logan City, Murray, Nebo, Salt Lake, Sevier, South Sanpete, Washington County, and Weber.

That means that 39% of the 41 school districts in the state offer robust information about curriculum on their websites. Of course, that means most didn’t meet the requirements for the certificate during this round, but a sizable percentage are leading the way.

It’s worth noting that many of the districts that meet all the requirements are among the largest school districts in the state, including Alpine, Davis, Granite, Jordan, and Washington County.

Perhaps these districts provide greater transparency because they have a higher demand for parent access to curriculum information simply from serving a larger number of families, or maybe they have more administrative resources to provide this level of detail on the website. Either way, education leaders should study which structural barriers may hinder other districts from doing more. Still, ultimately, those that met all requirements span from northern to southern regions of the state and include suburban, urban, and rural areas.

Districts that earned an honorable mention for their website

There were also 13 school districts that earned “honorable mention” status, missing only one or two categories. We highlight these districts to acknowledge the commendable work they are already doing and prompt consideration of simple changes that could help them build upon their web-based transparency and earn a certificate in the future if they choose to pursue it (since certificates will be given out on a rolling basis).

The districts earning honorable mention are Canyons, Daggett, Iron County, Juab, Morgan County, North Sanpete, Ogden City, Park City, Provo, San Juan, Tooele County, Uintah, and Wasatch County.

The majority of those missing only one category do not put a link to Canvas directly on the homepage, though they may host Canvas on the website somewhere else. Other hurdles among this group included policies that were not easily accessible (requiring three or fewer clicks from the homepage), broken links or errors on the curriculum webpage, unclear organization of curriculum details, or not adequately meeting the statutory requirement to host information about how to access district instructional materials. We hope these scores allow local leaders to review websites and decide what works best for the families in these districts.

Districts that need improvement to their website

Finally, 12 school districts needed improvement in several ways. These districts are missing five or more of the rubric requirements to receive a certificate.

Districts in this category are Beaver County, Carbon, Emery County, Garfield County, Grand County, Millard, North Summit, Piute County, Rich, South Summit, Tintic, and Wayne County.

Each has an online policy on the topic – an important step – but the website provides little else about curriculum.

Furthermore, it’s hard to miss that the districts in these categories are all in rural areas. Once again, unique barriers to rural areas may make it harder to pursue these changes, but parents in these areas deserve good information about curriculum as well.

Although the rubric we’ve created doesn’t comprehensively capture the only way to provide access to curriculum, and seeking a certificate is only voluntary, doing so may serve as a good template for these districts to start a review of their websites and consider ways to improve.

Recommendations and ongoing efforts

During this process, several districts responded that they’d like to do more and would be doing so soon.

We recommend that districts first seek to meet the statutory requirement to give parents the right to view instructional material used by the district, including hosting information on their websites about how they can do that. Having a written notice, dedicated webpage, and clear contact information may be a best practice to ensure this section is being complied with. Likewise, districts need not host copyrighted material online, but can provide clear information that guides parents, such as titles, authors, citations, links, or descriptions.

User experience is key, so any further changes should consider how it might feel for a person looking at the website for the first time to find information online. One could evaluate whether key information is accessible and obvious versus buried and obscure. Likewise, one could review the clarity of how information is organized or check for broken links to ensure the website is up to date. All of these reforms can apply to charter school websites as well.

Parents, on the other hand, have the responsibility to be informed and helpful partners in education. They should work with teachers to ensure their students are supported by the information made available to them through the website and other communications, since districts, schools, and teachers are taking the time to provide it.

In an effort to bring parent access to curriculum forward through voluntary reforms, Sutherland Institute will continue offering certificates throughout this year for districts that meet the requirements.