Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein announced this week that the number of parents, students, and teachers participating in a public school survey this year shot up by almost 40% to 800,000. To put that number in context, it’s more than 200,000 more people than live in Boston, Washington, D.C., or Denver.
“No one has ever attempted a survey of this magnitude,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “and no one has ever gotten this kind of response. The responses we got tell us that we are on the right track.”
In March, the Department of Education launched the second annual Learning Environment Survey, which asked parents, teachers, and students in grades six through twelve for feedback about their schools. Survey results help to determine schools’ grades on their annual Progress Reports and are used by schools to learn from their communities and improve.
More than 800,000 people—one in ten New Yorkers—filled out the survey. Of those eligible, more than 55% responded.
The results show that schools have improved their communication with parents and teachers, are creating more personalized instruction for students, and are more effectively promoting a culture of safety and respect. More respondents also reported being pleased with the way schools are serving students. Ninety-four percent of parents, for example, said they were satisfied with their children’s teachers this year, up from 90% last year.
“Not only are we getting better, more specific, and more representative information,” Chancellor Klein said, “but this information is telling us that we are steadily improving.”
Clara Olaya, the parent coordinator at the High School of Applied Communication, where the Mayor and Chancellor announced the results, said her school had doubled parent participation through intensive outreach.
“Principal Kociszewski and I got parents involved at the [school leadership team] meetings and [parent-teacher association] meetings,” Ms. Olaya explained. “These parent leaders then brought the word out to others. The whole community was involved. We also had the parent surveys sent to the school this year instead of to parents’ homes, so it was easier for us to tell who got theirs and who didn’t.”
James Liebman, the Department of Education’s Chief Accountability Officer and the architect of the survey, said the survey results will help schools improve.
“It’s great that figures are up citywide,” he said. “It’s great that our response rates are up. But what’s most important for our schools is that individual principals know exactly how they can improve, and—because they can compare their school with others like it—they have a blueprint for making these changes.”
To find a school’s survey results online, you can go to the Survey Web site and type in your school’s name in the space provided.
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