The new school year is upon us! Do you have an accurate read on your community?
A new academic year brings new challenges and opportunities. With the right approach, leaders can start fresh, deeply understand their communities, and bring about positive change to set their districts up for success in the coming year.
A back-to-school pulse check/survey can help. This quick, targeted check-in allows you to understand and identify your community’s needs, expectations, and concerns so you can address issues early and proactively to prevent bigger problems and strengthen community engagement.
In this post, learn why you should do a back-to-school pulse check, how to do it, and the best tools for it.
In this Article
Why back-to-school pulse checks are non-negotiable
School pulse surveys should be essential to every leader's back-to-school planning. They set the tone for the year ahead, help leaders understand community sentiment from the get-go, and acknowledge the transition from summer—helping to gauge readiness and identify anxieties and excitement.
Addressing and identifying concerns such as curriculum, communication gaps, and student support needs allows for early intervention instead of damage control later on. It also shows your community you’re listening and that their ideas matter. This builds trust and transparency and fosters a sense of shared ownership.
Early insights can form the foundation of the academic year, informing future strategic planning, resource allocation, and communication strategies for the entire year.
Running a successful back-to-school pulse check
With the right tools and plan, running a successful back-to-school pulse check doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. Follow these three steps to save time and resources.
3 steps for an effective back-to-school pulse survey
Choose the right survey and engagement platform
Choosing the right platform can make or break your survey. While they work to capture student, staff, and family insights, traditional survey platforms often miss nuance, open-ended feedback, and the voices of marginalized or disengaged groups.
- Panorama Education provides research-backed, standardized surveys primarily focused on quantitative data. But it’s geared towards districts with dedicated research teams.
- While Qualtrics brings a robust platform for conducting complex surveys and analysis, it’s best suited for districts with dedicated research experts.
- SurveyMonkey has a simple platform for building surveys; however, it targets districts that aim to save money by handling manual tasks themselves.
Comprehensive platforms like ThoughtExchange offer a fast and effective approach to district engagement. They allow leaders to engage quickly and easily with large, diverse groups and hear from all voices. Analysis is conducted in seconds using advanced and secure AI technologies. Leaders get actionable insights quickly and easily without spending time and resources on multiple platforms and extra staff.
Define your objectives
Clearly understanding your objectives is key. Consider these questions: What insights do you need to gather? Are you looking to understand communication preferences, gauge safety protocols, or assess curriculum clarity? Who is your target audience for this check-in? Are you engaging parents, staff, or all community members? Segment your surveys accordingly.
Craft effective questions
Ensure your questions are concise, focused, and aligned with your survey’s objectives. Use clear, unambiguous language. Include a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions.
For example:
Use Exchanges (a forum for anonymous group conversations that provide transparency into community perspectives and priorities) to gather students' thoughts and feelings about the school year.
Sample questions:
- What are your thoughts about this class/school year?
- What are your academic/personal goals?
- What do you need to feel safe to learn?
Foster support: Address key areas of concern to create a supportive environment.
Keep the collection period short, and be prepared to quickly analyze and act on the data. Make sure your platform can turn your data into an actionable plan.
“Prior to ThoughtExchange, when we would do community surveys, we had someone who would spend almost two months processing, analyzing, and charting the data. We’re saving weeks and weeks of work just because we have this platform.”
Read: 5 Pro Tips for Your Next K-12 School Survey
How ThoughtExchange empowers leaders: Simplifying pulse checks
Keep your school pulse surveys simple for the best results. Complex surveys that rely heavily on quantitative questions will discourage participation and survey completion. While comment box questions can surface the most valuable data, without the right platform, the data can be daunting to analyze.
ThoughtExchange provides a user-friendly interface for creating and distributing back-to-school surveys. It includes customizable templates for easy question building and seamless distribution channels like email, SMS, and integration with existing platforms.
You’ll also get real-time insights and analytics. This includes immediate data visualization in charts and graphs, automated sentiment analysis for open-ended responses, and dashboards that present key trends and patterns at a glance.
Effortless data collection
Make sure your data collection is easy and seamless. Your community is diverse, from language to culture to how they interact online. To engage more of your school community, remove participation barriers—especially for those who might otherwise be left out.
You need a user-friendly interface for creating and distributing pulse checks. Customizable templates and seamless distribution channels are also key. Meet your people where they’re at, whether through email, SMS, or integration with an existing platform.
ThoughtExchange:
- Allows responses from any device
- Offers multiple language options
- Supports anonymous input to build comfort and trust
Creating a welcoming, accessible experience helps ensure feedback reflects a broader range of voices.
“We have been able to transform the way that we communicate with our community, not just parents, but we use ThoughtExchange with staff and with students. It’s a fresh way to get feedback and perspectives in a format that’s really easy.”
Real-time insights & analytics
ThoughtExchange Advisor’s AI-chat function instantly completes analysis and reporting tasks from any-sized dataset. By using prompts and queries for your specific data, Advisor will produce an insightful answer in just seconds.
- Identify key themes and create summaries
- Understand common ground within polarizing topics
- Generate relevant talking points
Read: 5 Key Insights: How Educators Boost Surveys with AI-Powered Engagement
Actionable reporting for data-informed decisions
ThoughtExchange boasts custom reporting and data download functionality, so getting the right information into the right hands is quick and easy. Users can create an interactive web page or a slideshow, or share the top responses with one click. Leaders can quickly identify areas of strength and those needing attention.
- Choice of customizable reports
- Presentation-ready slideshows
- Participant data export
“Having immediate access to engagement results in various formats is fantastic. Even more beneficial is the collaborative team discussion regarding these outcomes, resulting in actionable steps that correspond with our established goals and priorities.”
Best practices for beyond back-to-school feedback
After you’ve completed your back-to-school pulse check, what’s next? Consider these community engagement best practices.
Communicate results
Always communicate the results. Share a summary of the findings with your community and update them on your progress. Closing the feedback loop shows that their feedback matters and builds trust.
Develop an action plan
How are you going to address your community’s feedback? Develop a plan based on the insights you’ve received. What concrete steps are you going to take? Assign responsibilities and set timelines for addressing identified issues.
Integrate feedback into the ongoing strategy
Be transparent and adaptable
Remember to keep your plans flexible and iterative. Acknowledge your community's challenges and be willing to adjust your plans based on their needs.
Empowering leaders from insight to action
A back-to-school pulse check is so much more than just a survey, allowing district leaders to build their year on understanding and collaboration.
By proactively gathering insights on community sentiment, concerns, and expectations, you can address potential issues before they escalate, foster an environment of trust and transparency, and strategically inform your plans for the entire academic year.
ThoughtExchange empowers education leaders to conduct these essential checks efficiently, transforming diverse feedback into actionable strategies that lead to a more connected and thriving school community.
See how easy it can be with ThoughtExchange.
