• All 41 school districts have some sort of policy regarding parent access to curriculum on their website, and the majority of them (32 to be exact) were easily accessible.
• Of the 27 districts that host information about district curriculum directly on the website, 20 districts did not have the information easily accessible; 17 districts did not have the information clearly organized by grade and/or subject; and 21 had at least one broken link.

​If parents or members of the public want information about what’s being taught in the classroom, some might hop online to look at their school district’s website.

That’s not an unreasonable step to take, since state law says local boards are required to make their curriculum readily accessible and available for parents to review.

While there are many ways to accomplish this, Sutherland Institute created a rubric that reflects a robust threshold of what districts could offer parents on their websites so parents can find clear information easily and efficiently. We then reviewed school districts across the state using the rubric to find what’s going well and note some areas for improvement.

Sutherland Institute’s most recent report, “Boosting Parent Engagement in Public Schools by Strengthening Parent Access,” highlights the full review of the 41 school districts’ websites. Below is a quick description of what we found.

What’s in the rubric

The rubric included criteria like whether the district website had a district policy online regarding parent access (access to curriculum or learning material itself from libraries or participation in the curriculum approval process) and whether the policy was easily accessible (three clicks or less from the homepage).

Aside from information about policy, the rubric looked at whether actual information about approved curriculum was hosted on the website, whether it was easily accessible, whether the curriculum information was well organized, and whether the webpages were working (no broken links or pages). There was also a category about whether a link to Canvas – a commonly used learning management tool – was found directly on the homepage.

Highlights from reviewing districts’ policies

The good news is that all 41 school districts have some sort of policy regarding parent access to curriculum on their website. And the vast majority of them (32 to be exact) were easily accessible, meaning they were three clicks or less from the homepage. For parents looking to understand their rights and opportunities for engagement through district policy, they are likely to find that information easily no matter which school district they are checking.

Of course, this also means that nine districts had policies that were available but a little harder to find, buried deeper and requiring more clicks into the website to locate. This is an area for a simple improvement – that is, making the policies easily accessible on the website.

Highlights from reviewing information about district curriculum

Furthermore, more than half the districts (27 of the 41 districts) had information about district curriculum directly on the website. Conversely, this means 14 districts did not appear to have such information available directly on the website.

Of those that did host information about district curriculum directly on the website, the information was not easily accessible in 20 districts; 17 districts did not have the information clearly organized by grade and/or subject; and 21 had at least one broken link.

Out of the 41 districts, 25 had a link to Canvas directly on the homepage, while the remaining 16 did not.

What this reveals is that districts are trying to do this work of parent access, but they could do more through some simple fixes. Districts could host information about approved curriculum if they do not already. Those that do could make sure the information is easy to find, that it’s organized in a user-friendly way, and that links are working and updated.

Conclusion

Of course, districts are free to choose how to display and organize information about curriculum. Sutherland’s review simply reflects a robust threshold that we believe would help the average busy parent. We hope these ideas serve as simple and constructive steps and offer districts ideas for improvement.