LEARNING ENVIRONMENT SURVEY2008-09

SCHOOL LEADER TRAINING

January/February 2009

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Learning Environment Survey: Agenda

1. SURVEY REFRESHER

2. WHAT’S NEW IN 2009

3. TIPS TO INCREASE RESPONSE RATE

4. IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCHOOL

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SURVEY REFRESHER•2008-09 is the 3rd year of the Learning Environment Survey

•Parents, Teachers and Students in Grades 6-12 receive separate surveys

•Survey counts for 10 percent of the total Progress Report Grade

•Designed to measure four categoriesACADEMIC EXPECTATIONSCOMMUNICATIONENGAGEMENTSAFETY & RESPECT

•In 2008, 40% of Parents, 61% of Teachers and 78% of Students completed surveys and gave feedback to their schools

WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

> Survey Kick-Off to coincide with MS Parent Teacher Conferences> Making the Online Survey accessible to all> Green School Award to recognize high online participation> Response Rate Updates will be issued regularly to schools> Simplified process to remove ineligible parents, students, teachers > Siblings policy explained> Survey Code of Ethics to clarify responsibilities of school leaders

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The Survey Team received feedback on all aspects of the Survey process. We have responded with improvements.

WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

> Survey Kick-Off to coincide with MS Parent Teacher Conferences This year the Survey will kick off on February 24th, in time for Middle school parent teacher conferences. All schools will receive parent surveys in time for their parent teacher conferences. The Survey period will close on April 24th.

> Making the Online Survey accessible to all> Green School Award to recognize high online participation> Response Rate Updates will be issued regularly to schools> Simplified process to remove ineligible parents, students, teachers > Siblings policy explained> Survey Code of Ethics to clarify responsibilities of school leaders

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The Survey Team received feedback on all aspects of the Survey process. We have responded with improvements.

Web Translation for Students and Parents

This year all parent and student online surveys will be translated into the 8 DOE approved languages. In addition, the online surveys are compatible with assistive and adaptive technology, as well as read-aloud settings.

Arabic Bengali

Chinese Haitian Creole

Urdu Korean

Spanish Russian

Public Libraries to partner with DOE for SurveyAll 153 branches of the New York City, Queens and Brooklyn Public Libraries will be prepared to assist parents who are interested in completing the Survey online. For more information on the locations and hours when local libraries are open, please visit these websites:

New York Public Library: http://www.nypl.org/

Brooklyn Public Library: http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/

Queens Public Library: http://www.queenslibrary.org/

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MAKING THE ONLINE SURVEY ACCESSIBLE TO ALL

GREEN SCHOOL AWARD TO RECOGNIZE ONLINE PARTICIPATIONGreen School Award

The Survey Team will be giving out a Green School Award. Green Schools will be recognized by Department of Education and City officials in the spring; the Green School Award will also be displayed both on that school’s Survey Report and Progress Report.

Online-Only ProgramSchools with above average teacher and student response rates were invited to participate in the Online-Only Survey Program for either students and/or teachers.

While only certain schools are participating in the Online-Only Program, all schools are eligible to receive the Green School Award.

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To receive the Green School Award, a school must achieve at least these online participation levels for all populations:

Parents 20%Teacher 61%Students 78%

WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

Survey Kick-Off to coincide with MS Parent Teacher ConferencesMaking the Online Survey accessible to allGreen School Award to recognize high online participationResponse Rate Updates will be issued regularly to schools

Survey Coordinators will receive updates beginning the first week of Survey administration. Online submissions will be processed quicker.

> Simplified process to remove ineligible parents, students, teachers > Siblings policy explained> Survey Code of Ethics to clarify responsibilities of school leaders

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The Survey Team received feedback on all aspects of the Survey process. We have responded with improvements.

IMPROVEMENT TO PROCESSING INELIGIBLESUnlike last year, this year we are neither asking schools to return the

envelopes of ineligible respondents nor to email the Survey Team with the names of those ineligible parents, teachers or students.

If a respondent receives a survey, it is because the ATS or Human Resources data listed that individual as active within that school. To fix this, schools must address the issue in the data source by taking the following steps.

> If a school receives a survey for a student or parent of a student who is no longer enrolled in that school, then the Survey Coordinator for that school must notify the school’s pupil accounting secretary of the need to update that student file. This is done in ATS.

> If a school receives a survey for a teacher who is no longer in that school, then the Survey Coordinator for that school should notify the school’s administration of the need to update that teacher file. If a school’s administration has questions on this procedure, they should contact their Integrated Service Center and ask for assistance from Human Resources.

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SIBLING POLICY EXPLAINED As it has been for the past two years, the rule remains that a parent

should fill out one survey per school, regardless of how many children he or she has in that school. The Survey Team has identified siblings as long as the following fields are identical in their ATS records:

> School ID (DBN), Street Number, Street Name, Apartment Number, Zip Code, Parent Last Name, Parent First Name, Phone Number

This identifies a majority of the siblings in schools, and we do not send multiple parent surveys if we can identify siblings. More than one parent survey could be sent to a family in a school if there are inaccuracies in the student data files in ATS, the source system which is maintained at schools.

If you have additional questions, please contact your school’s pupil accounting secretary or administration.

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SURVEY CODE OF ETHICS The efforts of Principals and other school personnel to promote a high

response rate for the Learning Environment Survey places an important responsibility on schools to avoid even the appearance of any breach in survey confidentiality or of any attempt to influence the responses of parents, teachers or students.

School officials should not coerce, influence, or encourage parents, teachers, or students to fill out a survey with any particular answer. While it is important to make efforts to increase the survey response rate, the goal of the Survey is to collect accurate information that school leaders can use to improve. This requires that respondents know that they can fill out the survey in a totally confidential manner without any influence over their answers. Principals and school staff should avoid taking any steps that suggest – or have even the appearance of trying to influence – the answers that respondents provide.

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WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

Survey Kick-Off to coincide with MS Parent Teacher ConferencesMaking the Online Survey accessible to allGreen School Award to recognize high online participationResponse Rate Updates will be issued regularly to schools Simplified process to remove ineligible parents, students, teachers Siblings policy explainedSurvey Code of Ethics to clarify responsibilities of school leaders

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The Survey Team received feedback on all aspects of the Survey process. We have responded with improvements.

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TIPS TO INCREASE RESPONSE RATEMinimum requirements of Survey Coordinators:

1. Receive Surveys

2. Distribute Surveys to Student, Teachers and Parents

3. Receive and distribute posters

4. Troubleshoot problems as they ariseA. The Office of Accountability Service Desk will be your main

partner in working through any issues that arise.B. The OA Service Desk will monitor shipping of surveys and

will contact schools to ensure that all boxes have been received by school leaders.

C. You will also receive tracking information on the boxes of surveys being shipped to your school.

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TIPS TO INCREASING RESPONSE RATE:BREAK-OUT SESSION #1In groups of 4-6 people, share your experiences with the

Survey for the past two years

1. What strategies did you employ at your school last year to increase the number of parents filling out surveys?

2. What did other schools do to engage parents and increase response rate?

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TIPS TO INCREASE RESPONSE RATE1. Create a survey team

a) Recruit a Parent Captain to help devise strategies, plan events, spread the word and reach out to families at your school

b) Include student leaders to assist in all phases of survey planning and execution. Students can be helpful in assisting with logistical efforts (sorting and delivering surveys). They can also review the results from last year and again later when the survey results for this year are released to contribute ideas about how improvement can be made.

c) Your school’s UFT Chapter Chair should work alongside you in an effort to drive response levels for the teacher survey. The Survey Team is conducting sessions for all UFT Chapter Chairs in order to answer their questions and emphasize the importance of the project to all teachers.

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2. Hold survey events for parentsa) Plan events to kick off the survey period. For elementary schools, the

first event will most likely be Parent-Teacher Conferences. b) Capitalize on pre-planned events parents attend. These might include

PTA meetings, basketball games, or school concerts. These are excellent opportunities to spread the word to parents and encourage them to fill out the survey.

c) Give parents access to the Internet by encouraging them to visit a library. During the survey period, plan a night or multiple nights where parents can come in and fill out the survey online in a computer lab. In addition, all libraries will be open to parents and ready to get them online to complete a copy of the survey in their language.

d) Encourage parent-to-parent appeals. Schools last year that had high parent response rates on the survey used parents to reach out to other parents. These efforts were coordinated through parent organizations and proved to be successful, especially in reaching out to parents who speak languages other than English.

TIPS TO INCREASE RESPONSE RATE

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3. Show that the Survey helped change the schoola) This is the most compelling, best incentive to encourage people to

take the Survey. While some schools will offer incentives to reward parents and students for taking the Survey, this is a much stronger appeal.

b) Present changes to school groups. It is not enough to only make the changes; you must also communicate that important changes have been made because of the feedback provided by students (an assembly), parents (Parent-Teacher conferences and PTA meetings), and teachers (faculty meeting).

c) This is especially effective in addressing low Teacher Response Rate. Teachers should be told that by completing a survey, they are making the school administration aware of changes they would like to see to classroom practices and organizational structures. If teachers do not complete surveys, the administration cannot learn of their preferences and the status quo will remain.

TIPS TO INCREASE RESPONSE RATE

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Break-Out Session #21. What did you do to improve your school with Survey results

from last year? Please note changes made based on:a. Parent surveysb. Teacher surveysc. Student surveysd. Overall strategies? School-wide trends

2. What did other members in your group do at their schools?a. Parent surveysb. Teacher surveysc. Student surveysd. Overall strategies? School-wide trends

IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCHOOL

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EXAMPLES OF HOW SCHOOLS USED SURVEY RESULTS 16K026 (ES) – The school’s survey results indicated that parents

felt the school was unsafe. Using an additional survey, Principal Michele Ashley was able to pinpoint the problem: the park located next to the school. She worked with other principals in her building and City park officials to close the park during school hours.

30Q148 (ES) – Seeing low scores on Communication, the school leadership devised a new way to communicate each student's progress in reading to parents. The school now sends regular letters to families with suggestions for how parents can help the child meet his/her end-of-year goal in reading.

26Q213 (ES) – The principal of the school worked with the Parent Coordinator to plan an International Fair involving parents to showcase the different cultures represented at the school. This both addressed the Engagement and Communication aspects measured by the survey.

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EXAMPLES OF HOW SCHOOLS USED SURVEY RESULTS 10X095 (MS) - Serge Davis was a new principal who came to the

school just after the release of last year's survey results. He decided that the best way to address concerns about parent engagement was to create "learning walks" to give parents a first-hand view of what was happening at the school.

10X020 (MS) - Carol Carlsen saw that her school did not score well in the Engagement section of the survey. She's focusing especially on student engagement by making sure students know exactly which adults in the school they can go to with particular questions or problems (addressing two of the questions on the survey itself). To supplement the effort and evaluate its success, she regularly gives the students at her school the Learning Environment Survey to track the school's improvement throughout the year.

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SURVEY QUEST WILL FACILITATE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENTSurvey Quest will be released in January to the public. Hosted on the

Survey website (schools.nyc.gov/surveys), Survey Quest is a tool that will support the efforts of school users to use survey results to improve.

These are the three main functions of Survey Quest:

1. Find A School –to view a Single School

2. Compare Schools –to view two schools

3. Advanced Find A School –to search for schools using survey results and school information

These search functions both point out a school’s potential for improvement, as well as identify other, similar schools that have posted strong survey results.

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SURVEY QUEST: SINGLE SCHOOL VIEW

Within the Single School View, users first see the summary view of a school. From here, users can click to view more granular details, all the way down to seeing questions and responses shown by percentage.

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A user can search dynamically for two schools and then compare their survey results.

The display is designed to allow for quick high-level comparison all the way down to the question-level.

SURVEY QUEST:COMPARES SCHOOLS

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Advanced Find A School allows users to search for schools using the same set of controls

Users can look for schools by:

SURVEY QUEST: ADVANCED FIND A SCHOOL

>School Survey Performance

>School Demographics

>Geography and School District

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SURVEY QUEST: ADVANCED FIND A SCHOOLOnce a user has made a

selections using any or all of the controls, she clicks either “View Matching Schools” or “Create My Own Report”.

A user can then either select one of the matching schools, compare two of the schools, or search for a new school.

Contact the Survey Teamsurveys@schools.nyc.gov

(212) 374-6646schools.nyc.gov/surveys

January/February 2009