Originally published in Utah Policy.

There’s an ongoing push for more parental involvement in education in Utah, and rightly so. Though the legal debate over Utah Fits All dominates headlines, parents’ access to what their kids are learning in school is another component of education reform that state legislators and state school board members should prioritize. A thorough review of all school districts in Utah reveals reforms that legislators and board members should explore.

Parents who want to know what their children are learning in school understandably expect to find such curriculum information on their school district’s website. However, a recent review of all district websites by Sutherland Institute found that access to curriculum information online varies by district and has room for improvement.

As part of this review, we ranked district websites based on our rubric – and offered the new Partners in Learning Certificate to those with perfect scores. Our review revealed two broad takeaways: (1) the legislature should clarify exactly what districts are supposed to offer parents in terms of access to curriculum information, and (2) the state board of education should improve awareness of these legislative requirements among districts by enhancing the resources it offers to school districts.

The good news is that Utah can fix this with minor changes in policy and focus.

Sutherland Institute’s review specifically evaluated district websites and how effectively Utah’s 41 school districts manage online materials. The evaluations were based on a rubric that looked at whether they complied with state law related to what must be online, had a district-specific policy on the subject on their websites, hosted other information about curriculum to help guide parents in their search, and whether information was easily accessible and well-organized.

Statewide, 16 school districts met all criteria to receive this certificate for their user-friendly websites. Thirteen districts were missing only one or two rubric categories, and 12 others were missing several.

Legislators may be interested to know that when scoring whether the districts complied with state statute requiring websites to include “information about how to access” district instructional material that must be “readily accessible and available for a parent to view,” we noticed a wide range of differences between districts. Some failed to meet the requirement at all. If this is the law, including the part about posting information on websites, there ought to be some way to clearly identify what is required and whether compliance exists.

To provide direction, language should be added that outlines a menu of options districts can implement. These could include posting online a written notice about how to access instructional materials, hosting contact information of the staff member who can initiate this process for parents, or including a labeled webpage that provides enough pertinent information that the parents can seek out the materials themselves. Otherwise, compliance and enforcement become difficult, and the requirement to have these details online may have no practical effect for parents.

The Utah State Board of Education can also play an important role, bolstering website transparency by equipping districts with resources to streamline and standardize practices statewide.

Many small or rural districts scored the lowest on our rubric. This may stem from a lack of demand by parents to share this information or limited resources to modify their websites.

In partnership with district feedback, the Board should create a toolkit of best practices to facilitate transparency efforts across the state. The toolkit should answer common questions about copyright issues or how to display information in a user-friendly way.

It should update the annual LEA Compliance and Assurance Checklist, which districts must sign to ensure they meet state and federal requirements, so that it clearly notifies districts about this or other website requirements intended to help parents find useful details.

With these reforms, school districts can bridge the gap parents still feel about their access to curriculum.

The benefits go further, too. For parents, clearer access to information means they can better support their child. For districts, transparency fosters trust and strengthens parental engagement. For students, having parents and teachers on the same page can help them learn. Districts highlighted in our research for having parent-friendly websites show that this achievement is possible.

While many Utah school districts succeed at providing easy online access to curriculum information for parents, there is still room for improvement. Legislators and state school board members should take steps now to build on Utah’s successes in curriculum transparency and address these gaps, thus strengthening the parent-teacher partnership and our education system as a whole.