The School Learning Candor Checklist (SLCC) results in an index of how straight forward educators have communicated about their behavior to increase student learning rates, the primary reason schools exist. SLCC is to schooling what the Rittenhouse Rankings are to businesses. This school candor index complements traditional assessment paradigms to reflect educators' efforts and accomplishments. It shows the balance of empirical facts with opinions and judgments in communications about student learning.

SLCC provides information for contextual surveys of school impression management, communication points feedback reports, language effectiveness, workshops to adjust in dynamic external settings, and coaching to accelerate learning rates.

Mission Vision
To offer a checklist that provides references for assessing the delivery of candid and creative information about student learning rates in schools.

Assumptions
Schools exist first to assist people to learn more quickly and easily than figuring out the same results on their own in other settings. Therefore, all school business should contribute in identifiable ways to increasing student learning rates and learning efficiency.

School communiqués should describe how their topics affect student school learning.

Educators hold diverse ideas about appropriate and acceptable schooling as well as student learning rates. They also use different practices to discuss their ideas with each other and with non-educators.

People respond to what's inspected more than to what's expected.

SLCC indexes these variations in order to allow comparisons that identify affects of these ideas on student learning rates.

Checklist
This checklist consists of 10 generic questions. Each indicates an aspect of accuracy of a school communiqué about the school's primary purpose, increasing student learning rates. Communiqués include emails, informal memoranda, documents, reports, speeches, meeting minutes, and other ways of telling anyone about school activities and accomplishments.

Uses
Students, educators, parents, boards of education members, media, and other interested parties may use this checklist to estimate the extent to which educators address their primary duty, to increase student learning rates with each school activity.

This index identifies the extent to which the underlying structure and context of school reports fits the central purpose of schools, the relative efficiency of student learning, and the results these communiqués accurately transmit information about the primary school purpose.

Instructions
Answer each question with a YES or NO.

Ten Questions
1. Does the school have a formal, board of education/trustees/overseers policy that defines student learning rates and ways to measure them?

2. Does each school educator have a copy of this policy to use in building curricula and lesson plans?

3. Does each lesson plan include how much it will likely contribute to any student's learning rate?

4. Does each memorandum, report, letter, press release, grant application, and other communiqués to anyone from any school employee tell how the topic contributes to any student's learning rate and how it increases or decreases that rate?

5. Does the communiqué offer references to empirical evidence of how it contributes to any student's learning rate?

6. Does the communiqué tell how much cost it adds to liabilities against that increased learning rate?

7. Does the communiqué tell what else any educator will do to increase any learning rate more?

8. Does the communiqué tell how it contributes to increasing any learning rate?

9. Does the communiqué include more words and images about student learning rates than other topics?

10. Does the communiqué tell how much it will contribute to any student's learning rate?

Calculating a School Learning Candor Index (SLCI)
Add the number of YES answers and NO answers.

Divide the number of YES answers by the number of NO answers to yield to yield a School Learning Candor Index.

For example, Shortform Elementary School Memorandum B received 0 YES answers and 10 NO answers to yield an SLCI of 0. Targeted Elementary School communiqués received 1 YES and 9 NO answers to yield an SLCI of 0.111

Interpreting SLCI
School Learning Candor indices range from 0.0 to 1.0. Scores indicate the balance of candor to fog, that is, the degree of fit between the central purpose of the school and candid communiqués about progress toward that purpose. Fog indicates school discussions not tied directly to student learning rates:

1.00 to 0.90 - Candid communiqués - best fit;

0.89 to 0.80 - Mostly candid communiqués - good fit;

0.79 to 0.70 - Balanced candor and fog - minimum fit;

0.69 to 0.60 - More fog than candor - room to increase fit; and

0.00 to 0.59 - Too much fog and not enough candor - dramatic reversal required to indicate school meets any expectations to increase student learning rates - poorest fit.

Some refer to lack of candor as truthiness, meaning that statements reflect the truth the presenter wants rather than an objective, empirically demonstrated truth. Anything less than candor, then could reflect opinion and judgment rather than fact.

So What; Who Cares? (Internal and External Validity)
SLCI offers a way to demonstrate the degree to which school communiqués reflect the central purpose of schooling as accepted by educators and as understood by community members.

Without such indices, educators do not have a way to demonstrate that their official behavior gives priority to the single student entitlement of earning increasing learning rates. These indices show how educators give priority to that entitlement over textbook assignments, legislative mandates, budget meetings, and other school routines.

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