This past May, after a springtime festival at Will Rogers Elementary School downplayed its Cinco de Mayo roots, parents were outraged.
They flocked to an ensuing Santa Monica-Malibu school board meeting in droves to express their frustration at being ignored, or worse, even disrespected.
“We need to make sure people are included,” the school’s PTA president, Katherine Caulfield Newall, said at the time. “This is an opportunity for us to take a look at a problem that is being felt by our fellow parents.”
Officials are attempting to follow through on their promises to improve parent engagement across the school district, as evidenced by a survey launched by SMMUSD in association with PTA leaders and the district’s Classroom Teachers Association.
The survey, which is available through Sept. 11, seeks input from parents on interactions they’ve had at their children’s schools and aims to measure how welcome they feel on SMMUSD campuses.
Data collected from the survey will impact future district efforts to reach out to parents, according to a press release, and involve them in issues affecting the education of their children.
“The success of our district depends on creating strong partnerships with families and community members,” Supt. Sandra Lyon said in the release. “With their support and involvement, we can continue to create an environment aimed at extraordinary achievement for all students.”
SMMUSD is conducting the survey with the help of K12 Insight, a firm that specializes in community engagement studies for school districts. The Virginia-based company is being paid $46,000, according to the consent calendar in the school board’s Sept. 2 meeting agenda.
The survey is being presented to parents as the district begins working with renowned sociologist and educator Pedro Noguera to close the longstanding achievement gap.
Noguera has said that parent engagement is crucial to reducing the gulfs in academic performance that exist between low-income and minority students and their peers.
“The most important form of parental involvement occurs at home,” he told SMMUSD faculty and staff during a convocation last month at Santa Monica High School. “Just because a parent can’t make a 4 o’clock meeting does not mean they don’t care about their children.”
The survey asks parents if they’ve attended events like back-to-school nights, open houses, parent conferences, support groups, performances and sports games. It also asks respondents to identify how often they access or read a variety of school communication materials.
The survey then asks parents whether or not they find certain statements about their children’s campuses to be accurate, such as “I feel welcome at the school” and “Cultural diversity is appreciated at the school.”
The survey also touches on programming, participation levels, parent-staff relationships and obstacles to parent involvement as well as parents’ technology access and language preferences.
A field for open-ended input is limited to 500 characters, but there may be opportunities for further conversations in the future.
“After carefully reviewing and analyzing feedback from parents, there may be a need to explore a specific topic more closely,” the survey reads. “In some cases, we may send a short follow-up survey to better understand parental opinions. In other cases, we may hold virtual or on-site focus group discussions.”
The survey can be found at www.smmusd.org/surveys.Parents who have given the district their email addresses will receive invitations to participate. Paper copies are available at school sites upon request.
jeff@www.smdp.com
Chevron, Dell, Pearson and K12 Insight are just some of the Corporate Partners of TASA – the company that shows up in the aiHIt history for K12 Insight
http://www.tasanet.org/Page/231
One parent asked me, “I thought the survey was anonymous – isn’t it? I didn’t write a name or an email address = do you think they can still cross reference?”
My response:
It is true, your name is not there – unless you chose to provide your email address at the end of the survey. The problem is, the Artificial Intelligence of data crunching software enables your registry information to be crossed with the so-called “anonymous” responses from this survey and when it gets crunched, you’re profile emerges through the cross pollination of data.
For instance, if you we’re a :
person of color
who speaks French at home,
belongs to XYZ school,
lives in XYZ zip code,
are female, between the ages of 25-35
and have a child who is an English Language Learner
use Illuminate
and qualifies for free or reduced lunch program
in this school district, its going to be very easy to deduce who you are and who your child is.
I won’t be participating in this survey. Here’s why:
I believe our schools are doing a fine job engaging parents without the need to do a survey that appears to collect all sorts of personal information on families, Including Income, Age, Race, sex, ed level, zip code, language, types of electronics at home, name of school, etc.
If parents did NOT Opt -Out of the School Directory (FERPA LAW), then, by law, schools may disclose, without consent, “directory” information such as a student’s name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance and more… This directory info can is easily cross referenced with info that shows up on surveys like this Parent Engagement Survey.
No information is provided on the Parent Engagement Survey regarding how the data is being stored/destroyed after it is collected and while it is in the hands of K12 Insight. Aside from issuing a report to the district and receiving a fee for creating/processing the survey, it simply doesn’t seem to be a workable business model without the sale of the data. The profits are primarily lie in the sales of that data to other interests who would love to get their hands on it.
There is nothing on this survey stating any sort of confidentiality, so my family’s personal data could be sold or exchanged by anyone who is willing to pay for it.
I checked on the aiHit website to see what has been added/deleted for ” K12 Insight” the company who issues the survey. Here is some of what appears there:
*** **8/29/15 DELETE Linked In Domain for AASA***
the School Superintendents Association Partnerships. Suppose, as I do, that AASA is buying this data from K 12. AASA could be then sell that data to their “Partnership Partners” listed on their site and they might also sell it to their “Corporate Partners” which include Financial Advisers, Ed Software, Life Insurance, Brokerage, and Retirement products, Food Services and Uniforms
**8/29/15 – Delete partner TASA**
Who are TASA’s Corporate Partners? ANSWER: For Profit Education companies who might just as easily be getting their hands on the data from this survey.
**8/29/15 – Delete partner NYSCOSS ***
NYSCOSS Corporate Partners are for Profit Ed companies, Insurance, etc
** 08/09/14 – Insert:about_pages_linkedin domain Dealershipinstitute.com***
– so this survey might provide autodealers with a way to profile parents for a job in that industry.
It’s great to see more schools interested in and working on Parental Engagement. Our app (www.bloomz.net) is one that will help teachers keep parents engaged, without spending a lot of time in their communication and coordination. Check it out!