How Students, Parents and Staff Respond Differently to the School Experience Survey

Every year, LAUSD gives a school experience survey to parents, students and staff, and publishes the results on a very nice searchable database. The 2017-18 survey results are now available.

This survey has SOOOOO much information, from behavior to technology to parent engagement. But my favorite thing to do is look at whether parents, teachers and students answered the same question in the same way – and if there were discrepancies in their beliefs about the school.

For example, in middle school, all three groups (parents, students and staff) are asked similar questions about the fairness of discipline at the school. They are given these statements and asked whether they agree or disagree (or other similar words about them)

• Question to Staff: This school handles discipline problems fairly.
• Question to Students: All students are treated fairly when they break school rules.
• Question to Parents: Discipline is fair at this school.

But the results are crazy different. Below you have the percent of respondents who answered “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” on these questions.

On average, parents feel very positive about the discipline at LAUSD middle schools, while students are much more skeptical.

Obviously, part of the difference is driven by the wording of the question. The student question asks about “all students” while the other two ask about “this school”. Similarly, the student question asks a bout “break[ing] school rules” while the other two ask about “discipline.” In addition, parents are given only 4 options (none of them being neutral) while students and staff are given 5 options (including one neutral option.)

But even considering all that, the difference in the responses is striking. 

And these differences pretty much hold across most middle schools. Here are the middle schools with the largest differences between teachers and students:

At these schools, teachers and students have vastly different opinions about whether the discipline is fair.

There are a few interesting patterns here. There are five K-8 schools on this list – Porter Ranch, Caroldale, Brooklyn Ave, Glen Alta and Arroyo Seco – which means they are generally smaller schools. Teachers at these schools may feel they are treating their middle school students fairly, but the students may feel like it the discipline is more elementary (regardless of the reality, that may be the perception when you are in a span school).

There are also a set of schools with much wealthier, and much whiter populations. Portola, Porter Ranch, Revere and Millikan all have a very different student population than the majority of LAUSD. It makes me wonder how race and socio-economic status plays into perceptions of fair discipline as felt by teachers and by students. 

As we start the school year in a week, it is important to consider this survey data. I encourage all teachers to really look at their school’s results – it really is one of the best snapshots out there of your school.