This set of posts, the first in our six-part research series, will answer two questions:
1. What staff, student, and parent survey questions are scoring highest and lowest?
2. What questions saw the biggest year-over-year changes?
In our next set of posts (coming later in September), we’ll talk about which areas you should consider fixing first to boost engagement for each group.
At the end of each school year, we combine the results from all our staff, student, and parent surveys. We then look for interesting trends and study what these data points tell us. (Unless otherwise noted, all items are on a 1 to 5 scale; the higher the score, the better.)
Student Observations:
1) It’s really good news that students have other people they can rely on when the goin’ gets tough. Most students have friends to sit with, hang out with, and help them, feel respected by their teachers, and have parents who are there to help. Additionally, the item with the most growth is the final question for students – how much they enjoy being at school. Like parents, there are strong year-over-year gains in overall satisfaction with school. In the same vein, students feel better about having an adult at school they can talk to about a big problem than they did in years past.
2) While we’re pleased with this, it also makes us wonder about those kids who didn’t agree with these statements. You need to know who those kids are so you can get the appropriate support in place. (If you're curious about those supports, keep reading some of our future blogs!)
3) Like parents, no item falls below 3 on students’ 1-5 scale (all lean toward agreement). The one that stands out is the one about kids following rules. This speaks to the benefit of surveying multiple groups at one time. Staff are concerned about discipline, parents are concerned about bullying, and students are concerned about rule-breaking – the same story three times over. This consistency calls attention to the fact that this needs to be addressed. You wouldn’t know how prominent that is unless or until you survey broadly.
4) We’re keeping our eyes on two items: students feeling like their work is meaningful and the extent to which they like to learn new things. Successful schools must balance students’ social and emotional needs (which are improving) and academic needs. This year reflects a drop in students’ academic engagement. Frankly, we need more data and time before we can speak to the why here. However, we'll look at it closely after 2024-25 to see if these rebound a bit. Our speculation (heavy emphasis on that word) for now is that it’s hard to want to learn new things if discipline, generally speaking, is an issue.
The School Perceptions Blog and Resource Center features the voices of our team members. This post was written by Rob DeMeuse, Vice President of Research.