How to use Survey Data
"I already know what the issues at my school are. I don't need these data to tell me."
We all have perceptions of the climate at our schools and how connected our students may feel to our school. And our feelings are an important indicator. So are the perceptions of your students. The Student Connection Survey report provides a summary of your students' perceptions. This information can be used in a number of different ways, including to:
- Test your own perceptions about your school's climate against the voices of your students.
- Analyze the importance of climate at your school-through correlations with other data sources such as Freshman on Track, dropout data, incidence reports, and attendance.
- Identify particular issues with student connection or school climate.
- Determine the appropriate resource allocation based on the specific groups at your school most in need.
- Inform school improvement planning efforts such as your SIPAAA plan and your Student Development Plan.
- Evaluate programs designed to support aspects of climate
How you will use data at your school is a decision that should be made by your school. It can be incorporated into existing efforts and used to brainstorm about new efforts. Some best practices for working with Student Connection data and discovering how it can be leveraged to best support student success are the following:
- Understand Your Data. Use your score report and the tools on this page to understand the format of the data.
- Involve your school staff, your students, and your school community. Accurate interpretation of the data involves consulting with diverse stakeholder perspectives that may perceive the data in different ways.
- Dig deeper into what your data may tell you by holding student, teacher, or parent focus groups.
- Ground your use of the data in your plan to address school climate.
- Look at the Student Connection survey data in conjunction with other school data such as attendance, grades, disciplinary referrals, freshman on track data, drop-out data, or achievement data.
- Look for differences between the perceptions of different subgroups. For example, girls may feel safer than boys, or your ELL students may feel less supported than other groups.
- Look for connections across elements for different groups of students. For example, Latino students may have different perceptions of the school across elements. Multi-element approaches to student connection can be developed when linkages are understood.
- Examine behaviors at different grade levels. Some issues may be more salient among younger students (e.g. emotional safety) and some are more critical for older students (e.g. academic rigor). Interventions can be made more efficient by targeting only the grade levels where help is needed.
Tools for Using Survey Data
Power-point to present your data to a school-wide team