Regular stakeholder research offers meaningful – "trackable" – data
The Wall Street Journal reported that a typical football game has a total of 11 minutes of actual game activity, in the midst of 49 minutes of routine activities related to the playing of the game. A typical broadcast of a National Football League game has 12 minutes of shots of coaches and referees. Let that sink in for a minute.
School district leaders can relate. For all the energy that comes from a visit to a classroom full of excited first-graders, a Friday night football game at a packed stadium or the presentation of diplomas at the end of students’ high school careers lies a lot of routine, repetitive activity critical to the operation of the school district.
While these responsibilities are hardly day brighteners for most public education professionals (and if they are, I’m concerned about you…), they are essential to the operation of the school district, of course.
Most are calendar (or, at least seasonally) driven. Monthly and annual financial reports. Board agendas followed by Board minutes. State testing and the reporting of the results, and so on. These critical tools of school district operations track metrics that must be monitored on a schedule.
Creating a routine research schedule with a cross-section of residents in your community is just as important, for the very same reasons. School districts that conduct research every year, every 18 months or even every two years find a number of benefits:
- It creates trackable data. Monitoring the ebb and flow of patron opinion keeps school districts from only seeing the trees (the loudest voices in the community) by presenting a routine picture of the forest (what typical residents are thinking).
- It measures the success of strategic decisions. One school district we work with saw a rather modest score on a question dealing with the awareness in the community of the district’s School Board members and all the work they do. The district set a data goal on that topic and created strategies and tactics to improve that score. The next survey, it saw the results of its efforts.
- It sends a message of interest to the community. Telephone surveys require only interviewing a fraction of your community members (typically 400 or fewer) to secure results that are statistically reliable. But sending out the message that the survey process is happening is one more piece of evidence to the community that its opinions are valued. (Really want to send a message of inclusion? Pair a phone survey with an identical online survey for patrons. The data is supplemental, rather than statistically reliable, but it’s good information and it gives the district an opportunity to say, “We want to hear from everyone, whether you are called or not.”)