As an avid follower of this blog, you probably already know that districts are required to administer student surveys in the 2014-15 school year. Whether to use locally created surveys or DESE’s version will be up to each district. To read more on this topic from DESE, click here or open the Quick Reference Guide to Student Surveys.
Good News: DESE’s student survey, available at no cost to districts, will come in short (about 20 questions) and long (40 questions) forms, with one version available for grades 3-5 and another for grades 6-12. (The surveys for grades K-2 are still in development.)
Bad News: Districts that decide to use the state’s survey questions may need to pay a vendor (Panorama) if they want professionally aggregated reports of the results.
In response, we at CES we will pursue cost-saving measures for our 33 member districts:
- Negotiate a group rate with Panorama
- Build an open source method for aggregating and displaying survey data.