Ed-DataSchools at present have access to a new tool that will make it easier for them to create their country-mandated  School Accountability Report Cards.

The tool was developed past the Ed-Data Partnership, made up of the California Department of Education, EdSource and the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team.

All California schools, including charter schools, are required to annually publish the written report card, which contains detailed information on demographics, school safety, academic performance, grade sizes, curriculum financing, and other aspects of a schoolhouse's performance.

For years, the California Section of Educational activity provided an online tool through which schools and districts could download a template with much of the information for the report carte already filled in.

But terminal year, as a upshot of budget cuts, and to the dismay of many schools officials, the department but provided a blank template and access to state data files. That meant that school and district personnel had to manually find and add the data to their report cards.

Country Superintendent of Public Teaching Tom Torlakson said yesterday that the money saved by the state was "clearly outweighed by the fourth dimension and trouble beingness shifted to California's more than than a 1,000 schoolhouse districts."

The 3 partners involved in Ed-Data came up with a solution to restore the pre-populated SARC templates and make them available to schools through the Ed-Data.org website, which offers a plethora of information about schools to the California public.

Under this collaboration, the Ed-Information team volition host and maintain an updated version of the SARC web tool. Staff from the CDE's Analysis, Measurement & Accountability Reporting Sectionalization, which oversees the SARC were actively involved in helping pattern and build the SARC Template Awarding for Ed-Information and will continue to oversee the data that goes into it. To serve California's various population, the template will exist provided in English, Castilian, Traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Hmong and Vietnamese.

"I'grand glad we've found a creative way to restore this tool, and I'm grateful to Ed-Data for stepping upwardly to the plate to assistance us meet this need," Torlakson said.

In joining with Ed-Data to restore the SARC template web tool, the CDE has leveraged a partnership that goes back more than than xv years and provides a uniquely rich and user-friendly resource for information on California public schools. It also allows users to compare schools and districts locally or statewide.

The Schoolhouse Accountability Report Cards were mandated by Proffer 98, the 1988 voter-approved initiative that amended the California Constitution to guarantee a minimum corporeality of funding from property and country taxes for kindergarten through community college didactics each year.

Over the years, the information that must be included on the SARC has grown as a result of legislative mandates. In 2004, for case, the SARC requirements were expanded as a consequence of the land'south settlement of the Williams vs. State of California lawsuit. The suit argued that California failed in its duty by non providing thousands of students in public schools with "bare minimum necessities," defined as textbooks, trained teachers, and rubber, clean, uncrowded facilities.  The SARC now includes information related to those problems.

A link to the new SARC template awarding can be establish here. For a sample template, visit the CDE website. 

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