Table of Contents
Start with “Why”2
Exploring Feedback & School Leader Exchange Worksheet3-4
Perception Mapping …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5-6
Discussion Questions7
General Outline for Sharing Results8
The Four D’s: Potential Reactions9
Sharing Data with Your School Community10
Synthesize Worksheet11
Action Planning Worksheet (homework)12-14
Education Week Guest Blog – “3 Questions to Guide Your Use of Student Feedback”15-17
Getting Smart Guest Blog – “Using Student Feedback to (Actually) Drive Change”18-19
What’s the why?
The Feedback Cycle . . .
Our theory of change . . .
1. Review the Key Ratings & Executive Summary.
a. What are two areas students perceive as strengths? Why did you select these areas?
b. What are the two areas to be prioritized for greatest improvement?
c. What patterns do you observe? Are different student subgroups reporting consistently more or less positive experiences?
2. Select a Summary Measure to focus on. Why did you choose this measure?
a. Which questions within that measure do students rate:
i. Highest:
ii. Lowest:
b. Within the chosen measure, what other patterns do you observe? Are different student subgroups reporting consistently more or less positive experiences?
c. Download the student comments and navigate to the comments related to your chosen summary measure. What additional insights do you draw from the student comments?
3. Discuss: Describe one practice that is working well at your school in this area or one specific challenge you are facing:
4. Take notes on the most promising practices shared at your table that you think could work at your school. Remember to ask clarifying questions, such as:
· What impact is this practice having?
· How was it started and how has it been modified over time?
· How could the practice be applied at my school given the setting?
· What is the most important thing to keep in mind when replicating this practice?
Mapping Perceptions Across Stakeholders: “Respect”Question (Measure) / Absolute Rating / Percentile Ranking / Proportion of Positive Ratings / Notes
Student: Elementary (1-3 scale)
“Does your teacher treat you with respect?”
(Personal Relationships)
Student: Secondary (Middle and High)
“Most adults in this school treat students with respect.”
(School Culture)
Family
“Teachers treat families with respect.”
(Relationships)
Staff
“Staff treat students with respect.”
(Relationships)
1. What questions does this data raise for you?
2. What’s surprising? What’s affirming?
3. How does your stakeholder feedback relate to your strategic priorities?
4. In an effort to use student perception data to advance equity and inclusion…
a. What does it mean to have an equitable school?
b. Where is there additional work to be done on your campus to fulfil your definition?
c. Hypothesize: What practices or conditions might be contributing to experience gaps on your campus?
1. Set the Tone
a. Why is the YouthTruth data important to you, as a school leader?
b. Recap the details – when the survey was taken, response rate, and themes covered.
2. Provide a Balanced Assessment of Results
a. Recognize both strengths and areas for improvement.
b. Provide open discussion about areas for improvement.
3. Build in Time for Questions and Reactions
a. People often need to talk – especially if it differs from their own perceptions or expectations.
b. Open debate is a healthy part of the process.
c. Data sparks discussions.
4. Have ideas in place about the next steps and how you’ll prioritize and work together to address the data.
Staff might feel defensive, and look outward for explanation. They may shy away from taking it seriously. Reinforce that students are the experts on their own experience, and coach staff to ask why students answered that way.
Some members of your team might feel dismissive – they could question the methodology of the survey or the validity of the data. Make sure to share this information with staff. The Survey Design & Methodology report can be downloaded from the appendix of your report or from the YouthTruth website (www.youthtruthsurvey.org/learn-more/).
Other colleagues might feel dejected. Emotionally, this data can be hard to hear and you need to give people time to process and absorb it.
Finally, staff may prefer their rose colored glasses and be tempted to downplay the negative. It’s critical to celebrate strengths, but you may notice certain staff latching on to only the positive data in a report and having trouble hearing the constructive feedback.
Sharing Data with Staff
1. How will you share your YouthTruth feedback with staff? What forums? When?
2. What types of reactions do you anticipate? Which findings do you think staff might find surprising? Affirming?
3. What are some strategies that you think would resonate with your staff?
Sharing Data with Students
1. How will you share the survey results back with students? What forums? When?
2. What do you anticipate the impact of sharing the data with students will be?
3. Did your YouthTruth report raise any questions that you’d like to clarify or further discuss with students? How will you approach those conversations?
1. How will you share findings back with parents/guardians (newsletter, social media, back to school nights, etc.)?
“They [students] are the experts about what goes on in the class. Even if I intended it to come out one way, if that’s not how they perceive it, that’s not reality. Certainly students also bear responsibility for that reality, but their perception is our reality. So my intentions are not as important as their expertise.” -Sarah Brown Wessling, National Teacher of the Year
1. What are some key strengths of your school described in your YouthTruth results?
2. What are some areas for improvement or continued focus, as reflected in your student feedback? Which of these are short-term priorities you can address quickly? Which are longer-term priorities that require more planning?
1 / Priority Areas / Short or long term?2
3
3. Brainstorm ideas to address the identified issues for improvement. Do you anticipate any barriers or challenges? How might you address these challenges?
1 / Proposed Approach / Anticipated Challenges / Proposed Responses2
3
4. What are some proposed next steps to address your priority issues? Who will be responsible for leading these efforts? Which efforts can be embedded into ongoing work you are already undertaking? Use the chart below to get started.
Homework: Next Steps: Planning & ImplementationPriority
Area(s): / Near-Term Action Steps: / Assigned To: / Longer-Term Action Steps: / Assigned To:
Finding Common Ground, Peter DeWitt| Guest Blog by Jen Wilka, Executive Director, YouthTruth
April 28, 2016
Education is one of the few industries, perhaps the only one, in which everyone has a firsthand experience and a valid opinion. That translates into lots of ideas from various stakeholders about what should be done differently to improve schools. But why is it that the ideas of the people we’re ultimately trying to serve, and arguably those most affected – the students – tend to be the last voices heard and acted upon?
Part of the reason is that it’s not always easy to use student feedback productively – or at all!
While there are many ways to get student feedback, the focus of our work at YouthTruth, a national nonprofit based in San Francisco, is through surveys. Here are three ideas and key questions to help get the most out of student feedback for school improvement.
1. Compared to what?
You surveyed your students. You got the data back. You’re looking at the findings and see that, on average, your students rate relationships with their teachers a 3.5 out of 5. What do you make of that? Is that how all kids feel about their relationships with teachers? What if you knew that the median-rated school in your district received a 4.1 out of 5, or that students nationally rated the quality of teacher-student relationships as a 3.5?
When interpreting and constructing meaning from student survey data, context is everything. Absolute scores only tell part of the story.
· If you’re surveying in your own school or classroom, consider: How do student experiences compare across demographic subgroups, such as students of different genders or races? What about the FRPL or ELL students? How have student perceptions changed over time?
· If surveying district-wide, how do student experiences vary across campuses? If there are different school models in your district, are there differences between student perceptions in STEM schools or Project-Based Learning schools versus schools with more traditional approaches?
· If you’re working with a regional or national partner, how does your students’ feedback compare to feedback from other students in a comparable group – like state or national benchmarks, or other schools with similar characteristics such as rural or high-poverty schools?
2. What do you do when the feedback gets personal?
Student feedback usually includes both positive and critical feedback, and things can get emotional. This is not a popularity contest. But even so, data representing how students experienced your class, your staff, or your school feels really different than student test score data. And you can bet that it will elicit some different reactions – especially if the feedback challenges adult perceptions or expectations.
As educators, our work is often personal, but we don’t have to take the feedback personally. School leaders, you will likely have the first look at student feedback and therefore a head start on processing the data. Anticipating your team’s reactions and thoughtfully planning the data-dive conversation will better position you to coach staff and begin action planning.
Anticipate the 4 D’s (some or all of which you may be feeling as well):
· Staff might feel defensive, and look outward for explanation. They may shy away from taking it seriously. Reinforce that students are the experts on their own experience, and coach staff to ask why students answered that way.
· Some members of your team might feel dismissive – they could question the methodology of the survey or the validity of the data. Make sure this information is included in the survey report or that you have it on hand to share with staff.
· Other colleagues might feel dejected, or may be tempted to downplay the negative aspects of the student feedback.
Given your student survey results, how do you think your team will respond? Take note of the reactions you think you’ll encounter and plan how you’ll support your team.
Then, in the group conversation:
· Reaffirm your shared goal or mutual purpose. Since student perceptions are empirically linked to academic outcomes, your shared goal might be to drive academic outcomes. Your mission or vision statement can be useful here too.
· Restate the “why.” Consider inviting department chairs to share about why student feedback is important for their work. This models taking a broad view instead of taking the data personally.
· Maintain safety. Conditions for dialogue require that individuals do not feel threatened. Create space for discussion and debate.
3. What do you expect to learn?
The Research Question: Before launching into any research project, you would define your research questions. At the beginning of a science experiment, you would craft a hypothesis. Similarly, before surveying students, consider:
· How will you use the data?
· What questions should be asked, in what ways, so that the data you get back is useful for your intended purpose?
· What is your hypothesis, as an adult school community, about what you will learn from students?
How you will use the data should guide not only what kinds of questions are asked, but also when to survey. Do you need baseline information at the beginning of a leadership transition or school model change? Do you need feedback to drive teachers’ professional development plans? Do you need insight about the student experience to inform summer planning?
Hypothesis Testing: Forming a hypothesis about what you’ll learn from students will help you and your team engage in the results. A creative approach we’ve seen work well is an “estimation survey” to test where staff and student perceptions differ. In this exercise, focus in on one theme at a time and ask staff to guess how they think students responded; then reveal the ratings.
· What are the areas of alignment?
· Where do staff expectations and student perceptions diverge? (If you’re using a staff survey that covers similar themes, use it here.)
Those areas of divergence are ripe for conversation, and can help surface unconscious bias and differences of opinion in a non-threatening way.
In The End
When done well, student surveys are cost effective, valid and reliable, and allow students to share candid feedback anonymously that they may not feel comfortable sharing through other means. Student surveys are empirically linked to their academic outcomes, and are a leading indicator of those outcomes. So unlike summative data, surveys provide a rapid, formative feedback loop – telling us not just how our students did after the fact, but getting to the why and helping educators make real-time changes to improve students’ experiences, and ultimately their outcomes.
We just have to be willing to ask students, and be prepared to really listen when they answer.
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By Sachi Takahashi-Rial
What if your grade school principal had asked you and your fellow students directly for your feedback? And what if that principal not only listened, but also made changes based on what you said? Your school would have been more successful. At least, that’s what the research says.
Research shows that student perceptions are linked to academic outcomes, and that happy schools can more readily close the achievement gap (curated list of researchhere). So it makes sense to ask students what their learning environments are really like in order to better relate to their unique perspectives.
More and more schools, districts, and CMOs are gathering student perception data to help make schools better. These are exciting times! But as the student voice movement grows, I hope to see more dialogue about how to turn that student perception data into action.