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Frequently Asked Questions about the Individual Survey Reports
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Q: Why should I take these results so seriously? They are just opinions, right?
Q: Our school just got the "My Voice/My School" survey reports from CPS. Is this different?
Q: This is so much material to digest. How do I figure out what's important?
Q: How do I share these findings with my school community?
Q: What is the difference between the summary and the details report?
Q: What does "schools like yours" mean in the summary report?
Q: The Learning Climate box on the Five Fundamentals chart is cream but it looks like it should be pale green. What happened?
Q: Why are certain meaures shown on the Five Fundamentals chart, but listed as white or "no data." Why include them at all?
Q: I'm confused by the graphics in the details report. Why are the horizontal bars in the order they are?
Q: In the details report, when you compare my school to "top" and "bottom" schools, is this referring to achievement?
Q: My Five Fundamentals chart is all red or pink. If I share this, it will make me and my school look bad. How can I use this data in a constructive way?
Q: I've read the results, and it looks like we're doing fine. Our averages are better than "schools like ours" and our "Five Fundamentals" chart is almost all light or dark green. What do we do with this data?
Q: We are a K-5 school and we don't have any student responses. Why don't you survey younger students?
Q: My high school students in grades 11 and 12 grade also took the survey. When will we get those results?
Q: I am a new principal. How is this information useful to me?
Q: Are these reports tied to the SIPAAA process?
Q: Where do I find more training on how to use this data?
Q: Why should I take these results so seriously? They are just opinions, right?
A: The survey shows us how teachers and students perceive their school, and these perceptions influence their behavior. Their behavior, in turn, defines your school's reality. Understanding these perceptions—even if you don't agree with them—helps you predict how students and teachers are going to work together and whether your school will continue to improve. This isn't a random sample, and a small group can't skew your results. This report describes how a large segment of your school community perceives your school. Systemwide, the reports reflect the perspective of 17,574 teachers and 141,627 students in grades 6 through 10. At any individual school, we don't include data on any questions that didn't get a response from at least 42 percent of either students or teachers. In most schools the response rates are much higher. To see how many of your students and teachers responded, see page 6 in the summary report.
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Q: Our school just got the "My Voice/My School" survey reports from CPS. Is this different?
A: Yes. While we included the Consortium questions and the CPS questions on the same student survey your school took last spring, they are very different reports. The Consortium survey is confidential, distributed only to building principals, and is far more comprehensive because it includes teacher responses. It covers 31 school improvement measures (35 for high schools) and includes teacher responses on 312 questions. (In contrast, the results of CPS' "My Voice/My School" survey was released publicly and included responses from students and parents on only eight measures). If your school leaders have already started working on student issues identified in the "My Voice/My School" report, you could dig into a related student measure from the Consortium reports to get more nuance. You could also focus your attention on the new data from teachers highlighted in our reports, because teacher perceptions might help you better understand a student issue.
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Q: This is so much material to digest. How do I figure out what's important?
A: Start with your summary report. Open to pages 4 and 5. First you will see a large color-coded box called the "Five Fundamentals" that offers a quick glance of how your school is perceived on each of these five broad categories. Facing that is a page of colored rectangles, which represent the 31 measures that make up the Five Fundamentals. This offers you a road map for zeroing in on specific areas of school improvement. To dig deeper on these specific areas, look for the area of concern in the summary report, and then get the breakdown on questions in the details report.
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Q: How do I share these findings with my school community?
A: Start with your leadership team. Discuss the overall findings and zero in on a few issues that can be tackled by staff committees or community leaders. Perhaps "Instructional Leadership" looks strong overall, but the results of the "teacher influence" measure indicate that your teachers don't feel involved in making school-wide decisions. If teacher influence becomes one of your improvement goals, you could plan a school meeting around this issue and distribute copies of pages from the summary and details report that deal specifically with the teacher influence findings. Get your Local School Council talking about the measures under "Family and Community Involvement." If "Teacher-Parent Interaction" shows up as pink or red on your chart, check out how your school has done historically on this measure (summary report) and then take a closer look at these questions (details report) to find your trouble spots.
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Q: What is the difference between the summary and the details report?
A: The summary report provides an overview of every measure over the last decade. The trend graphics on every even page show averages for your school, schools like yours, and CPS schools overall (elementary or high school). The summary report also offers some questions to consider for each measure. The details report gives you just that-more details about each question asked on the survey. It's not meant to be read in one sitting; rather, think of it as a reference you can use if you want to dig deeper into your summary findings.
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Q: What does "schools like yours" mean in the summary report?
A: We rely on test scores, enrollment, mobility, racial composition, neighborhood characteristics and other indicators to identify schools that are "like yours."
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Q: The Learning Climate box on the Five Fundamentals chart is cream but it looks like it should be pale green. What happened?
A: Without getting too technical, the colors on each measure are based on how far your school is from the system average. Cream is within one-half of a standard deviation above or below the average. Pale green is up to one standard deviation above the average and dark green is everything above that. Pink is up to one standard deviation below average, and red is everything below that. For the colors of the big Five Fundamentals box, we take the average of the measures that comprise the big box and each measure is weighted equally. For Learning Climate, for example, there are three measures. If one is pale green, one is cream, and one is dark green, then it looks like it should average out to pale green. But it won't always happen that way, because sometimes the measures are all at the lower end of their range and will average out to "average"-or cream on the chart.
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Q: Why are certain meaures shown on the Five Fundamentals chart, but listed as white or "no data." Why include them at all?
A: We didn't ask any questions about "Resource Management" or "Partnerships" on our survey, so we have no data on these measures. But CPS included these measures in their development of the Five Fundamentals so we left them on for consistency.
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Q: I'm confused by the graphics in the details report. Why are the horizontal bars in the order they are?
A: For every measure, there are questions that are "easier" to support, and those are at the bottom. The questions that are easier to support are typically asking about conditions that should exist at most schools. The ones that are harder to agree with are conditions that aren't considered standard, but indicate schools that go above and beyond on certain measures. For example, on the category of "teacher-teacher trust," the question about whether they "feel respect from other teachers" is at the bottom because more teachers are likely to agree with that question. The question about "most teachers really care about one another" suggests a much deeper level of trust and therefore is less likely to be endorsed at as many schools.
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Q: In the details report, when you compare my school to "top" and "bottom" schools, is this referring to achievement?
A: No. It refers to how schools responded only to that measure and has nothing to do with school achievement. Thus, the group of schools in the "top" and "bottom" changes for every group of questions.
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Q: My Five Fundamentals chart is all red or pink. If I share this, it will make me and my school look bad. How can I use this data in a constructive way?
A: Even in the most challenged schools, you can find areas of strengths, those green boxes on page 5. Build on those strengths to figure out which issues to tackle first. For example, "learning climate" might be one of your school's weaknesses, but students tell you they trust their teachers and get the personal attention they need. This tells you that these relationships can be leveraged to make the school safer and improve classroom behavior. Look in your summary report to find out whether these "red areas" represent a one-year blip, or if they've been declining over time. Don't try to fix everything at once-these reports are meant to guide you over a period of years.
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Q: I've read the results, and it looks like we're doing fine. Our averages are better than "schools like ours" and our "Five Fundamentals" chart is almost all light or dark green. What do we do with this data?
A: Even schools that look great overall can find ways to improve. If your school is doing better than the system average, perhaps you should compare your school to "schools like yours" or the top quartile schools on every measure. In your summary reports, look at those areas that have been flat or declining over time, even if the overall trends are average or above. Perhaps the Learning Climate is strong, but only 60 percent of your students say they feel safe in the school hallways and bathrooms. Even at 60 percent, this is an area that needs improvement.
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Q: We are a K-5 school and we don't have any student responses. Why don't you survey younger students?
A: We have always surveyed sixth through eighth graders in elementary school, because they are better able to handle the length of the survey and the complexity of some questions.
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Q: My high school students in grades 11 and 12 grade also took the survey. When will we get those results?
A: Those questions focused on perceptions about preparation for college, and a report on those findings is expected this spring.
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Q: I am a new principal. How is this information useful to me?
A: Even if the results aren't about your leadership style or learning climate initiatives, the reports are still valuable because they give you an immediate snapshot of your school's strengths and weaknesses. Bill Truesdale, a principal at Douglas Taylor Elementary for three years, inherited a stable Southeast Side elementary from a respected and trusted principal who held her post for 30 years. Truesdale said the survey information was invaluable because it gave him objective data, rather than personal opinions, about conditions at his new school. He said: "As a new principal, you want to keep doing what's working, and you want to spend a lot of time observing." His school received high marks for teacher-principal trust in 2005, and he wanted to build on that by giving his largely veteran staff a greater voice in decision-making. He created 16 teacher-led committees that focused on academic subjects and school culture. "There was a lot of trust among teachers here, but the opportunity to have those leadership roles was not built into our structure."
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Q: Are these reports tied to the SIPAAA process?
A: Yes, because they are extremely valuable in giving principals the data they need to drive decisions about improvement priorities and spending. However, these reports should not be read once and tossed in a file cabinet. They should be viewed as a resource that for the next couple years offers a comprehensive picture of your school's conditions.
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Q: Where do I find more training on how to use this data?
A: The Consortium works with teams of principals and other school leaders in workshops starting in January. Typically, these workshops are organized through area offices or networks of schools. If you are interested, please let us know via email.
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