Survey shows involvement key to academic success
The Village of Garden City has always rightfully prided itself on its school district thanks to its consistently high level of achievement on the academic side of the ledger. Much of it can be traced to the advocacy of Garden City parents, an assertion that was bolstered by the results of a 2014 parent engagement survey according to Superintendent of Garden City Schools Dr. Robert Fiersen, who went over the numbers at a recent school board meeting.
Having begun the survey last spring, Fiersen discussed the district’s motivation, saying, “There is a strong association between parent involvement with a child’s education both at home and at school and student performance in school—it is also related to improved student behavior in school and improved attitudes about schoolwork.”
Fiersen also said that teachers report greater job satisfaction in schools with higher levels of parent involvement, they receive higher ratings of their teaching skills from both parents and principals, and that parent involvement in schools is associated with lower alcohol use and other at-risk behaviors.
The survey represented five clusters: home-school communication, student academic engagement, student social-emotional engagement, perceptions about child’s school and student life at home. A pie chart was displayed on highlighted questions, divided into five categories ranging in different variations from “not at all” to “a tremendous amount.”
For almost all the questions, the majority of responses were one notch below “a tremendous amount,” representing a 4 out of 5 score , and the rankings of “not at all” were nearly universally in the single-digit percentages.
In the question, “How much of a sense of belonging does your child feel at his or her school?,” 45.3 percent responded “quite a bit,” 23.6 percent said “somewhat,” 22.4 percent said “a tremendous amount,” 7.6 percent said “a little bit,” and 1.1 percent said“not at all.”
Fiersen expressed particular admiration over the results for the question, “How often do you have communications with your child about what his or her class is learning at school?”, 50.6 percent said “almost all the time,” and 34.1 percent said “frequently.”
another slide Fiersen noted that the district was “very interested in” was “In general, how well does your child learn from feedback about his or her work?” where more than 70 percent of the responses were divided between “fairly well” and “quite well.”
“If we’re giving feedback to students, and they don’t understand what it is we’re saying, its hard to ask them to improve, or to sustain what they’re doing well,” Fiersen said.
The results that generated the most concern among Fiersen, as well as the school board and administration, were the results for how often a child reads for personal enjoyment, where 16.5 percent said almost never.
“The question is, with a child’s schedule, is there time for recreational reading on their own?” Fiersen said.
Board of Education President Barbara Trapasso shared her impressions of that 16.5 percent result, saying, “I think most students see the summer time as absolutely no work they want to do out of those two months other than what is required for school.”
Among the findings of the survey: Parents engage their children in conversations about the academic and social aspects of school, however are not as involved in school activities and communicating with teachers as sometimes perceived.
“We find that students are motivated to do well, schools are seen as doing a good job of preparing students for what comes next, students are organized and self reliant, and teachers and administrators are viewed as helpful and respectful,” Fiersen said.
Fiersen noted areas in need of improvement: About 20 percent of respondents thought their children were not comfortable or only mildly comfortable asking for help from adults in school, and issues relating to the depth of reading and the value and purposes of learning.
The district based the survey on a 71-item “question bank” created by Harvard Graduate School of Education and released by Survey Money, a Palo Alto, California company and put together 28 items for K-12, including three questions for demographic information with no names. Members of the administrative team identified priority items.
“The Harvard study covered seven areas of family engagement, from how much help students receive at home to how confident parents are in supporting their child’s schooling, and we worked with that,” Fiersen said.
Parents were given three weeks to respond to the emailed questions, and the district collected 1,431 responses. The total number of students for 2013-14 was 3,889.
“Almost 40 percent of the responses were collected within the first two days,” Fiersen said. “Two additional reminders elicited the remainder of responses.”
The district is currently considering a student survey with similar questions and a teacher survey, and expanding the questions to include relevance to parents of students with special needs, as well as focusing on groups to probe topics more deeply.
“In general, the results were very positive, however, there is always room for improvement,” Fiersen said. “This survey was a quick way of amassing data, and hopefully some of the next surveys will dig deeper.”
