School officials ‘digging through’ results of district-wide survey

At Monday night’s School Board Meeting, Superintendent Zach McLaughlin presented a first look at data from the district’s wide-scaled survey that began in late March.

www.eagletimes.com    

School officials ‘digging through’ results of district-wide survey | October 19, 2017 By PATRICK ADRIAN padrian@eagletimes.com SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — At Monday night’s School Board Meeting, Superintendent Zach McLaughlin presented a first look at data from the district’s wide-scaled survey that began in late March. Working with Panorama Education, a Boston-based surveying firm, the district collected feedback across its learning community, designing surveys for students, faculty, staff and parents. While the data through Panorama can be studied in a multiplicity of ways — allowing student responses to be compared by grade level, gender, or other demographics — what matters most to McLaughlin in the student surveys is what was happening at the classroom level. “In my own experience as a teacher, [the students’] individualized feedback about my work was the best and most valuable information I ever received as an instructor,” said McLaughlin. Students from grades 3 through 12 were asked about their classroom engagement, teacher relationship, sense of belonging, learning climate, and perception of expectations. Additionally, each high school student randomly selected two of his or her teachers to give individualized feedback on. Mclaughlin, however, stressed this information was both anonymous, and only for view by the receiving teacher. “We did not give administrators access to the individual teacher report,” McLaughlin said. The district also surveyed parents, with interest in barriers they experience from being more engaged and able to support their child’s schooling. The district sought participation with emails to parents with links to the online survey, and setting up computers for parents at parent-teacher conferences. “We are still digging through the layers [of these surveys],” McLaughlin told the board, but was able to share the most important takeaways the administration had found so far. Among the positives, McLaughlin said, students overwhelmingly believe that their teachers care about them and are confident about their knowledge. Additionally, the data showed the student responses being in line with those nationally. There was also some concerning information. In addition to a trend among student and teacher opinions that individuals have limited control in their habits and capacity to learn, most students identified peer behaviors creating obstacles to classroom learning. While some board members, particularly Chair Ed Caron, questioned the district’s seeming over-saturation in studies, others see the Panorama Survey as a highly insightful tool for self-awareness and learning. “Finding out that students see their greatest barrier to learning is their peer-behavior — that’s big,” said board member Jeanice Garfield McLaughlin says the plan going forward includes two more rounds of surveying this school year, ongoing analysis, and improving their process through fixing