How to make your next school survey count
Every school district relies on surveys to gather feedback from their communities. Unfortunately, most school surveys get a failing grade.
But there is hopeāthat is, school districts can still make their surveys count.
That was the message delivered by former Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Dana Bedden during an online event. The bottom line, says Bedden, surveys should be a conversation with your community. To create a useful dialogue, administrators need to understand the needs of their communities up front, ask the right questions, and do a better job managing expectations.
Looking for a good way to get input from your school community? Before you create your next survey, consider these takeaways from a Q&A between Dr. Bedden and other participants at the event.
Survey goals are important. What are some examples of goals that other schools have set for climate surveys, for example?
The key to setting effective goals is making sure they are SMARTāaka, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Dr. Bedden says his schools set goals three ways:
1. By releasing an initial survey, identifying a benchmark, and then setting
standards based on that benchmark.
2. By measuring the amount of positive feedback among participants about a
particular theme (think school quality or parent engagement).
3. By using pre-existing goals to set a baseline for success, then adjusting those
goals accordingly.
āIn the absence of having any type of frame of reference to begin with, in some areas we just had to get our first survey out and let that be the benchmark,ā explains Bedden. āAnd then, go from there.ā
A survey is only as good as the number of responses it receives. Whatās the best way to gauge an acceptable response rate?
It depends on the number of participants youāre reaching out to, the way youāre distributing your survey, as well as the survey topic. For parent responses, 15- to 25-percent response rates are typical. Bedden says two previous school districts he worked atāone with more than 20,000 students and another with more than 30,000 studentsāsaw survey response rates hover around 10,000 parents.
Surveys are about making people feel engaged. What can school leaders do to connect with their communities and ensure that parents and others see their input as important enough to share?
Before launching a survey in his district, Bedden says he spends a lot of time out in the school community working what he calls āthe circuit.ā āYou need to market that youāre going to do this [releasing surveys],ā explains Bedden. āAnd you market it by talking about it when you enter a district.ā Incorporating the idea of community feedback and the importance of survey participation in presentations you make to local community groups is key to laying the groundwork for community participation, he says. PTAs or PTOs, business advisory councils, and social groups, such as the local Kiwanis club, can make for powerful allies.
Most schools are great at collecting data, but donāt always know how to use it. How do you turn data into change in your schools?
When a student engagement survey showed students were unhappy with school lunch choices, Bedden and his team looked at lunch sales in combination with anecdotal informationāliterally looking through the trash to see what food students where throwing awayāand used that information to conclude that changes in the school lunch program were needed. āThat data for me in this case validated a concern,ā explains Bedden.
What can you do to make sure your next school survey is more than just a glorified exercise in data gathering?
About the author Todd Kominiak: Todd is Managing Editor of TrustED. Email: tkominiak@k12insight.com.
About Dr. Dana T. Bedden: Dr. Bedden is the former Superintendent of Schools of Richmond Public Schools, VA. He also has served as a Superintendent of Schools in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.
