PRIVATE SCHOOL SURVEY

Posted by Marc William on May 10th, 2019

An increasing number of private educational institutions around the country are recognizing the importance of measuring parent, staff and student engagement in their schools. Parent and staff satisfaction and engagement in schools have been found to have a powerful impact on student achievement, and students who are engaged in their school work experience greater success in their classroom, in their community and in post-graduation endeavors.

The value of this information is clear, but measuring the level of engagement in a school can be a daunting and time-consuming task. Processing the information and organizing it into a usable format can be even more challenging. A private school survey is a powerful and effective tool for harvesting information and quantifying engagement. School Perceptions, LLC has developed a proprietary software system to gather and quantify parent, staff and student engagement in schools.

Survey respondents can complete the surveys at their convenience using an online platform they access from an emailed link or survey code. The survey typically takes 10-15 minutes to complete, but respondents are able to stop and restart the survey, moving back and forth within the survey and changing their answers as they wish before completion. Users have found the software simple to navigate and found it lends itself well to all types of electronic devices.

Schools find that using a third party like School Perceptions for their private school survey is helpful in fostering user confidence in the survey process by ensuring anonymity and as well as eliminating much concern about internal bias. The software also maximizes participation by tracking completed surveys and sending auto-reminders to non-responders.

Key areas or indexes of engagement are measured by asking carefully chosen, research-based questions throughout the survey. These indexes examine many aspects of engagement, with the intent of focusing on the whole person to get a more complete and more accurate picture of parent, staff or student engagement.

School Perceptions has experience working with a variety of public schools as well as faith-based and secular private schools. Since 2002, School Perceptions has collected data from over 10,000 private and public schools, encompassing a wide range of enrollment, socio-economic and geographic positions. The School Perceptions software stores this data to be used to provide confidential similar-school comparisons, giving schools the ability to see how they “measure up” to their counterparts. Having access to results from a variety of schools allows for more relevant comparisons.

Schools that choose to repeat their surveys have found the longitudinal data to be equally valuable. Comparing data to past years gives school leaders the ability to easily evaluate the effectiveness of past initiatives, and can be used to better direct future planning efforts. Administrators can also use the results to identify and celebrate their strengths and continue on in those areas of success.

Private schools place a high value on recognizing and meeting the needs of their students, staff and parents. It’s this level of commitment to educational excellence that inspires many to regularly measure engagement in their schools with a school survey.

Source: PRIVATE SCHOOL SURVEY