Surveys to show the way

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

When Carbon County School District 1 Associate Superintendent Neil Terhune takes on the superintendent role in July, he wants to know where the school sits in its goals for creating an educational environment, where it is headed and how everybody feels about it.

Toward this end, the district is in the midst of a series of surveys to establish a panorama of viewpoints. In three phases, the district’s manager for grants and data analysis Duane DeWald is surveying parents, teachers and administrators, and students.

“We want to get a picture from all sides,” DeWald said. He is issuing, tracking and analyzing the data from the surveys. “Parents, teachers and students is our 360 degree evaluation,” he said.

In October 2007, the district kicked off the survey series with phase one, directed toward parents. Phase three, to be issued in March, should incorporate student input on how they view their participation in education.

Currently in phase two, DeWald has teachers and administrators taking three surveys. The set is designed to provide insight into the effectiveness of educational measures, the integration of technology in education and quality of life for teachers.

The first teacher survey is Robert Marzano’s “What Works in Schools” survey. DeWald presented its results at last Thursday’s school board meeting. According to his findings, District 1 teachers and administrators often have different opinions about teaching methods that work. These, DeWald said, are areas for improvement. But the survey also shows marked success in areas that were already targeted for improvement.

Marzano’s survey is based on 35 years of educational research. This is one of the reasons it was chosen. Since the district is currently using Marzano’s theories of how students learn to better design its curriculum, it makes sense to use surveys that relate.

“We want to use surveys that are well-measured and accurate,” DeWald said. “And we need to know the results are applicable.”

The last of the three teacher surveys should finish on Friday. DeWald plans to analyze the data and present his findings to school board members in March. The board members should see the “quality of teacher work life survey” on March 13 and the “level of technology integration survey” on March 27.

After DeWald finishes gathering data, the information should fall into the hands of each school’s development teams so they can design plans for correcting problem areas.