Sharing the Monitoring Feedback

Whether it’s survey data, focus group responses, or the results of a mapping exercise, a vital component of a monitoring system is sharing the information with educators, parents, students, and sometimes even community members as soon as possible so it can be used to improve school climate for the students who are still in the school. Most people— especially those in education— have taken surveys at one point or another and never heard anything about the results. They’re left wondering how their responses compared to others and whether anyone would do anything with the informa­tion collected. As we mentioned earlier, monitoring isn’t just collecting data and storing it in a data warehouse or using it to write scientific journal articles that most parents and teachers might never read. Parents deserve to hear what they said as quickly as possible and to see how their views differed from those of their children, from those of the staff, or from parents at other schools (see Box 15.1). As part of the Building Capacity and Welcoming Practices projects, individual reports were prepared for the districts and schools as soon as possible so they could review their data and determine which issues to address. Jennifer Walters, who served as superintendent of the Escondido Union School District, in California, says it was refreshing to work as part of a research project in which the information was not only shared, but also shared in a timely way. “From the very beginning, it wasn’t something being done to the district, but really some common work,” Walters said. “Not only would the data information be shared with me or be discussed with us and move our organization forward, but then in updated communications, it was ‘here’s what we’re doing in Washington, here’s what we’re doing with the coalition.’ Other times I’ve worked with universities, they’ll come in and they want to do some research or an investigation. They’ll do that and then I have no idea to what extent it’s used afterward.”