Our customer service is a point of pride for us.
Gathering feedback from parents, students, and staff is an important—although sometimes challenging—part of a district’s decision-making process. At School Perceptions, the most rewarding part of our job is making data collection as straightforward and painless as possible for districts, allowing school leaders to focus on what they do best: providing their students the best education possible.
We start by creating a survey plan that works for you. We then give you the tools and step-by-step instructions you need to make it successful, all while providing any support needed along the way. We welcome questions by email or by phone (yes, a real person will answer the phone!).
The following are some of the more common questions we hear.
How does School Perceptions help maximize our survey response rate?
Our software tracks survey codes and marks them as “complete” when the survey has been taken. This allows us to send reminders to those who have not responded. In addition to sending out survey reminders, we track your response rate and keep you updated so you can share your progress with your staff, parents, and/or community.
What can we do to maximize our response rate?
School Perceptions can provide you with email templates, press releases, or images to post on your website and social media pages. Asking community partners, like libraries, radio stations, and local businesses, to promote the survey is a great idea as well. When people know what to expect and how important their feedback is, they are often eager to respond.
Should we post a direct survey link on social media?
Announcing your survey online is a great idea, but survey links are usually not shared. Our software can assign a unique, one-time-use survey code to each respondent, which allows us to send reminders to non-responders and ensures data integrity.
My staff (or parents!) are concerned about confidentiality. What can I tell them?
We built our software so that that neither we nor the school will see data linked to a staff, parent, or community member’s name in the survey results portal. Also, our software won't disaggregate data when an "n" falls below three. So, if there are three respondents or fewer that fall within a disaggregation attempt, the software will display an "N/A" message.
What if parents or community members don’t have internet access?
We can prepare a PDF version of the survey for you to print and distribute as needed. You can also set up computer “kiosks” at school and invite parents or community members to take their online survey there. Setting up your kiosk is easy with our simple step-by-step instructions and is especially effective when planned around events like parent-teacher conferences, school concerts, or reading nights. This option was popular before the COVID-19 pandemic and is sure to be a good alternative again very soon.
Who sees the survey results?
We can create a summary of your results in PowerPoint format that schools often share with their board and community. A more detailed report is provided for your district administration, well-suited to help districts dig a bit deeper.
The School Perceptions Blog and Resource Center features the voices of our team members. This post was written by Cari Udermann, Project Implementation Manager.