By Kim Hilsenbeck
Conclusions of a parent and community satisfaction survey put together for Hays CISD by K12 Insight, a third party research firm, show slight improvement in some areas.
For example, of the 2,275 parents/guardians who responded to a question about how they would grade the quality of their child’s school, 44 percent gave it an A in this year’s survey compared to 41 percent a year ago.
When asked the same question about grading the quality of Hays CISD as a whole, 35 percent of the 2,355 respondents would give the district an A, compared to 30 percent last year.
Some of the grade scores given were higher than in the 2013-2014 school year survey, while others were the same or lower.
Three surveys – parent/community, employee and student satisfaction – were conducted by K12 Insight, a survey research vendor. The response rate for the 2015 parent/community survey was up from 2,156 total respondents the previous year to 2,355 this year.
The data for the employee and student surveys will be presented in upcoming issues of the Hays Free Press.
Previous survey efforts, conducted by TASB in the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years, were not used for comparison with the K12 data.
Tables 1 and 2 on page 3B compare the past two years’ scores.
Elementary schools once again received a slightly better grade than middle or high schools. Overall, the high school grade fared better this year than in 2014. However, there was a slight decline in middle schools with an A or B grade over the previous year’s survey.
The annual cost of the three surveys is $68,796.
The complete survey results are available at www.hayscisd.net.
Response rate:
The family and community survey was administered March 23-April 16, 2015. Invitations were sent out to 12,410 individuals asking for their participation. The total response rate, combining unique URLs (N=948) and public URLs (N=1,407) was 19 percent (N=2,355). Ten percent of overall responses were in Spanish.
Survey Methods:
K12 Insight emailed individual invitations that included links to the survey. A link to the survey was also posted on the district’s website, and paper surveys were also available on request. The survey was available in Spanish both online and on paper. Participants received communication about the survey through email, letters home to parents and the district’s web page. Reminders were sent March 27 and April 3.
Limitations of the research:
Results do not reflect random sampling; therefore, they should not be generalized to all Hays CISD parents and community members. Rather, results reflect only the perceptions and opinions of those who participated in the survey.
The findings for each item in the report do not include participants who did not answer that question. In charts and graphs, data labels less than 5% are not shown.
