Developing, implementing, and testing a parent feedback instrument for public school boards and employees

Abstract

<p>The primary purpose of this study was to identify, implement, and test a parent feedback questionnaire to be used to gain information from parents about the operation of the board of education, the district administration, the programs, policies, and procedures of individual school buildings, the school administration of individual school buildings, the teachers and professional staff of individual school buildings, and the support staffs of individual school buildings. The questionnaire was developed with assistance from a judgment panel;The opportunity sample consisted of two school systems located in the northeastern United States. Custom tailored scanforms were prepared for each district;The questionnaire used was divided into two parts. The first part was specific questions about the various school groups. The second part allowed respondents to rate the importance of the questions in the first part;The data from the questionnaires were analyzed. Mass authorship of the document provided social validity, while the Cronbach coefficient alpha procedure was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. Additionally, confidence intervals were computed for each district and for the survey as a whole;The major findings include: (1) The parents felt all the questionnaire items were important for parents to rate. (2) The highest rated questions were four in the area of programs, policies, and procedures of the individual school building, and one in the area of teachers and professional staff. (3) The lowest rated questions included three from the area of the school board, one from the area of the district administration, and two from the area of programs, policies, and procedures of the individual school building. (4) When the results of both districts were combined, a reliability of 0.97 was computed for the entire instrument. (5) Confidence intervals of +/-4 percent for the entire survey and +/-5 percent at both Stream Harbor and Cotcar were obtained. (6) The instrument and the process proved to be quick, easy, and cost effective.</p>