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Gathered below are evaluations of ten school district web sites.  These evaluations were done as an exercise for Dr. Alice Christie's Advanced Internet class at Arizona State University West. These evaluations are based on rubrics provided by Dr. Christie. The school district sites were randomly selected and evaluated by Rick Baker.		As with all things living, web sites are designed to grow and become.  So, in order to communicate a site's scores for each element in the rubric, leaves will be used to signify the "maturity" or "growth" level of the site.
		No leaves or one leaf indicates an emerging site.
		Two or three leaves indicate a developing site.
		Four or five leaves indicate a mature or exemplary site.

School District 1	School District 2	School District 3	School District 4	School District 5
School District 6	School District 7	School District 8	School District 9	School District 10

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Williamsville Central School District:  East Amherst, New York
http://www.wmsvcsd.wnyric.org/
Organization:	This site has a nice opening page which provides three navigational tools that remain consistent throughout the site, making it easy for visitors to find their way around.  A site map is also available.  The site, while consistent for the most part, has a few pages that do not follow the general pattern.  This may cause some minor confusion for the visitor.
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Information:	The information on the site is easily found and mostly helpful.  It appears that the site is updated on a regular basis and has a “What’s New” section on the opening page.  Contact information is posted on each page.
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Presentation:	The site is clean, clear and consistent.  The swap-image slide show on the opening page matches the district’s mission statement and is purposeful.
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Technical Aspects:	The site is technically sound.
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Mechanics:	The site is well structured and professional.  Grammar and spelling errors are not evident.

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St. Johns County School District:  St Augustine, Florida
http://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us/
Organization:	While there is an apparent attempt to provide an effective navigation scheme, it seems to fall short of its goal.  There is a drop down menu and “QuickClicks”, but the page lacks general categories leaving the visitor searching through a sea of documents to find the needed information.  Some pages force the visitor to scroll side-to-side.
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Information:	Though the site may be challenging to navigate, the information that is provide is valuable. There are “new” signs on the index page providing links to those pages in the site.  Once in the site there is a wealth of information that is useful.  Disappointingly, there is no contact information listed for the web master.  According to their own guidelines guidelines.html this is a requirement of all school pages.
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Presentation:	The site is inconsistent and leaves the visitor wondering if there is anyone at the wheel of this ship.  Graphics are used throughout, but have little purpose.  Animated gifs are used but flip annoyingly fast, change color and say little.
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Technical Aspects:	The site loads well in both major browser formats.  The major links work, a few exceptions are found within some of the accompanying pages.  There are some links that the visitor may assume to be links within the site, but when followed the links are to outside pages.
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Mechanics:	The disorganization of this page hampers its usefulness.  The page has valuable information that, if given a framework of categories, could make for an exceptional site.  The language is professional, spelling and grammatical errors are not evident and no further editing seems necessary. There is evidence that much energy has gone into the development of this site and it deserves the structure to make it work.

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Plano School District:  Plano, Texas
http://k-12.pisd.edu/
Organization:	This site has a very inviting page that draws the reader into the site.  The pages are crisp and clean providing clear navigation to all sections of this broad and deep site.
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Information:	The site provides information for all audiences that the site is designed to serve.  Contact information is provided and it appears that the site is updated on a regular basis.
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Presentation:	This site has a very clean and effective presentation.  The graphics are well designed and purposeful.
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Technical Aspects:	The site’s links seemed to be working, with one exception.  This broken link takes the visitor to a district page that informs the visitor that the page cannot be found and redirects the user back to the district home page. The one major problem that could be found on this site was download time.   Some of the pages loaded slowly using a cable modem, indicating that the pages would load very slowly on a 56k or slower modem.
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Mechanics:	This site has a strong professional feel.  There is a nice opening page that follows sound design principles.  There is no evidence of a need for editing, and spelling, grammar and other conventions seem to be in order.  The page didn’t employ the use of alt labels.

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Concord-Carlisle Regional School District:  Concord, Massachusetts
http://www.colonial.net/index.php
Organization:	The organizational structure is consistent throughout the site.  The navigation elements are well structured and effective.  Contact information is provided on every page.
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Information:	The page has adequate information but would further benefit from having parent, community, teacher, etc. sections.
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Presentation:	The page is easily navigated and is consistent and attractive.  In Internet Explorer each page indicates where the visitor is with a dotted line around the appropriate navigation identifier.  This function, however, does not work in Netscape.
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Technical Aspects:	The site’s main page loads quickly and, because it shares its navigational boarders, other pages in the site load equally as fast.  Pages in the site didn’t work well in Netscape 6.1.  The pages loaded fine, but the swap images and alt labels didn’t work and caused problems with displaying the pages.
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Mechanics:	The site displays no editing flaws.

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Junction City Schools:  Junction City, Arkansas
http://www.scsc.k12.ar.us/junctioncity/
Organization:	While there is an attempt to keep this site consistent, it goes a bit overboard without purpose.  The look is attractive and the same buttons are used throughout the site for navigation.  Even though the buttons are attractive they do take up a lot of real estate on a page.  It would also help if the buttons stayed in one place rather than move from side to top.
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Information:	While the page is attractive at first glance, it is severely lacking in information.  There seems to have been an excellent attempt made at developing a site to meet the needs of the district, but the site is in its infancy.  Many of the pages were incomplete, with links leading to dead ends.  Hopefully, this indicates that the page is still under construction.
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Presentation:	The page uses what appears to be a template or theme from FrontPage.  The buttons and text show up fine on the deep blue tiled background.  Many of the buttons had text that ran off of the edge.  No alt labels are used.  Text-only viewing would be hampered.
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Technical Aspects:	Images are not optimized and several are on the index page.  The first and main image would take almost two minutes to load on a 28.8 modem.  The page loads and works equally well in both major browsers.  Text-only browsing could be improved by providing a text based navigation bar somewhere on each page in the site.
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Mechanics:	There are glimmers of organization that spell hope for this site.  The page is mostly marred by its lack of information, which may be coming.  There are few basic structural flaws that could be easily fixed.  The links all worked fine, but currently lead to nothing meaningful except the indication that there may be an organizational scheme behind it all.  With some work this has the potential of being a good site.

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Finneytown Local School District:  Cincinnati, Ohio
http://www.finneytown.org/
Philosophy & Academic Standards:	All elements are present.
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District Information:	All elements are present with the possible exception of district boundaries visually shown.  A map to the various schools was provided, but not an overall district boundary map.
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Curriculum & School Programs:	There was no evidence of the district’s curriculum.  The school site technology pages did provide some evidence that best practices in technology use are supported.  New sections of the site provide descriptions of special programs.
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Audience:	The site appears to attempt to address a wide range of audiences.  A greater focus on student and classroom activities at the elementary level might provide an improvement.
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Sensitivity:	There is evidence of cultural diversity within the pictures on the site.  There is only one language available, but the audience may only require one language or there may be too many to provide an alternative.  The pages are almost all text with few, if any, graphics used for links so the site is text-only friendly.
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Links:	There are links to community and state resources along with links to areas within state and federal departments of education.

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Hallsville R-IV School District:  Hallsville, Missouri
http://hallsville.schools.missouri.org/
Philosophy & Academic Standards:	The mission statement, district philosophy and the state standards are present on the site.  There is no mention of a district technology acceptable use policy.
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District Information:	There is some district information provided, but more information on district boundaries and employment opportunities could be added to improve the site.
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Curriculum & School Programs:	There is evidence that students are using technology in wonderful ways to be able to create this page, however there are no stated district curriculum or technology goals.  There are pages in the site that highlight the district’s special programs and show the unique character of the district and its community.
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Audience:	There is considerable information about the community and its character that would not only be of interest to the community, but provides the outsider with an orientation to the heart of the district.  Student and classroom projects are featured in the site and students and teachers created the entire web site.
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Sensitivity:	The site provides all text navigation, making the site available to populations that use assistive devices when browsing the Internet.  There is only one language available, but the audience may only require one language or there may be too many to provide an adequate alternative.
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Links:	There are links for parents to the state department of education and the local standards.

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Western Placer Unified School District:  Lincoln, California
http://www.wpusd.k12.ca.us
Philosophy & Academic Standards:	All elements are present with the exception of academic standards.  The curriculum department has a container for a page but a page has not yet been posted or it is down for repair.
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District Information:	District department, personnel and policy are all included.  Employment opportunities are not evident.
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Curriculum & School Programs:	There is no curriculum information listed at this time.  There are no external links to state standards.  Best practices of technology use are not listed.
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Audience:	The site is targeted to a general audience.  There are links that serve teachers and one page reserved for parents that contains two internal links.
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Sensitivity:	There is no obvious evidence of cultural sensitivity or a lack there of.  Most of the site is text-based, but some of the pages use graphic-based button links that could cause a problem for those using special assistive technologies when browsing the site.
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Links:	There are few outside links from the district page that provide the visitor with a better understanding of the school district other than a link to the California Academic Performance Index.

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Casey County School District:  Liberty, Kentucky
http://www.casey.k12.ky.us/
Philosophy & Academic Standards:	The district philosophy and mission statement is present, but the academic standards are not.
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District Information:	The site provides board policy information, district departments and contact information.  There is no information on employment opportunities.
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Curriculum & School Programs:	There is little to nothing on curriculum and school programs listed.  There are some technology links, however they are operationally specific for teacher use in configuring systems.
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Audience:	It is unclear as to who the audience is when considering the entire site.  Everything is grouped together with some information directed to employees, some to the general public, and some to parents.  Students are not specifically targeted, although there are links provided for students on the links page.  No student or classroom activities or projects are highlighted.
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Sensitivity:	The site provides all text navigation making the site available to populations that use assistive devices when browsing the Internet.  There is only one language available, but the audience may only require one language or there may be too many to provide an adequate alternative.
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Links:	There is a links page providing links for research, safe sites and search engines.  There are no links to state or federal departments of education.  There are few links to community, state or national resources.

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Anchorage School District:  Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.asdk12.org/
Philosophy & Academic Standards:	All are present.
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District Information:	All are present.
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Curriculum & School Programs:	All are present.
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Audience:	This extensive site covers nearly everything one could imagine.
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Sensitivity:	The site provides all text navigation making the site available to populations that use assistive devices when browsing the Internet.  This site also allows the visitor to choose his or her own preferences for the site to display.  There is only one language available, but the audience may only require one language or there may be too many to provide an adequate alternative.
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Links:	Great links to all types of sites that support learning and the mission of the district.  It’s all here!
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