Burlington Public Schools Gets Better, Faster Climate Survey Data With ThoughtExchange
Christus Health uses ThoughtExchange to foster clinical collaboration, ignite cultural transformation, and improve staff retention.
Representing over 3,500 students and 57 spoken languages, Burlington Public Schools serves the community of Burlington, Massachusetts, just west of Boston. Administering a diverse population, the district’s leadership needed to ensure that its engagement strategies gathered high-quality, actionable data while remaining in-depth and inclusive.
That’s why Superintendent Eric Conti and Director of Mental Health Christine Conceison chose the ThoughtExchange AI engagement and experience platform for their second annual district-wide school climate survey.
Getting the What, but not the Why
The first year Burlington ran its school climate survey, the community was clear in their feedback. They were grateful to be asked about their experience in the district, but “they wanted to voice why they were answering questions the way they were answering them,” Conceison explains.
Although the leadership team understood their community’s priorities, they couldn’t access deeper qualitative data from their surveys. Like many school climate survey tools, theirs limited the qualitative feedback participants could share. And when surveys do offer comment box questions for depth, leaders face spreadsheet data that can take weeks to sort through and interpret.
“We don't have a qualitative data department. You're looking at the data analysis team right here,” says Conti. It was vital for Burlington to find a platform to quickly gather and analyze both qualitative and quantitative data—without the heavy lifting.
Burlington prioritized the ability to deeply understand all of its demographic groups. They needed a platform that could provide multilingual capabilities and anti-bias interactions, as well as pinpoint each group’s values and perspectives.
“We have a diversity of students and interests here in Burlington,” Conti explains. “We're really trying to serve all kids and make sure the community is engaged in that service and aware of the student needs.”
Full-picture climate survey data
Taking the lead on the district’s second annual school climate survey, Conceison leveraged ThoughtExchange’s multiple engagement methods to capture the data the district needed. The district opened four surveys—for staff, parents, and elementary and secondary students—for three weeks in December 2023, closing them on December 22nd.
Using ThoughtExchange’s survey tool, Conceison could both input the previous year’s questions for data tracking consistency and include more qualitative feedback questions, allowing the community to share their real thoughts beyond a multiple-choice selection. This question combination allowed participants to voice their opinions in-depth and provide context for their survey answers.
“As a non-super-techie person, I was able to create the survey and do the branching. I had such wonderful support from the ThoughtExchange team in all of my questions, and it wasn't a huge learning curve,” Conceison shares.
With the data in hand almost as soon as the survey closed, Conceison quickly pinpointed areas of concern for follow-up. Conceison sent out our transparent, multi-way group conversation tool, Exchanges, to dig into the details of each issue.
“It’s invaluable to be able to use the platform in different ways to dive deep and gain a true understanding from multiple educational partners of what they mean when they answer a certain way,” she explains.
High-quality data analysis, made easy
What did Burlington’s team do with all this qualitative data? Instead of swimming in a sea of data for weeks, Conceison and Conti immediately understood their community’s priorities and values through ThoughtExchange’s integrated analysis tools. “ThoughtExchange allowed us to do the qualitative analysis to a much higher quality,” Conti tells us.
Conti was almost skeptical of the platform’s AI technology when he entered the Results Dashboard. ”ThoughtExchange produces answers so quickly that a part of me was questioning whether it's real or not. It couldn't possibly be doing this! I'm still a little bit amazed by AI, so I'm probably showing my age,” Conti laughs. “But as I got into the responses, I could see the platform really was doing an accurate summary of the feedback.”
As she explored the results, Conceison was impressed with the Compare analysis feature, where leaders can cross-analyze survey question responses, favorability scores, and demographic groups. “The Compare tab played a huge role for us when looking at the questions and trying to dive deep into areas that we could focus some support. We could see favorability scores by demographic and look at how students, staff, and parents and guardians responded,” she explains.
Our conversational AI analysis tool, Advisor, also provided Conceison with fast, in-depth qualitative analysis of their open-ended question responses. Advisor can access all of the engagement data plus any contextual information shared with it—such as strategic goals or district vision. In just seconds, they were able to analyze the data from multiple angles and get recommended next steps specific to their district.
Reporting results in days, not weeks
Remember when we said that Burlington’s climate survey closed on December 22nd? On January 2nd, Burlington’s leadership team presented staff with in-depth, high-quality climate survey results. With a traditional climate survey survey tool, the results could have taken a month or longer to surface.
“The data was immediately available, easy to analyze, and easy to put together to share,” says Conceison. “It was easily accessible by different demographics and groups. The time, for me, was spent on what to highlight, what to bring to the community, and what to show.”
Conti was also thrilled with the speed at which he and Conceison shared the results with staff and community members. “We were able to do a very detailed analysis. And then we were able to present to the school committee and the community right away.”
When participants invest their time in providing feedback and see leadership quickly receive and recognize it, trust is built. Conti believes that Burlington’s community engagement participation will grow through their use of ThoughtExchange.
“If people take the time to answer a survey and don't feel like we do anything with it, or if it takes us four months to analyze the data from a survey, they’ll be less likely to fill it out next time,” he explains. “Using ThoughtExchange helps with participation.”
Climate surveys are just the start
“I would absolutely recommend ThoughtExchange for school climate surveys, as well as other surveys and methods of garnering feedback from different educational partners in your community,” Conceison tells us.
Conti agrees. “ThoughtExchange provides an anonymous way for people to really give us positive direction and share their values. Ultimately, that's what public schools do, right? We operationalize the values of the community,” he explains. “ThoughtExchange is a much better way to get people to communicate their values. I've been doing surveys for 25 years, and this platform is so much more than that.”
Seeing how quickly and easily they were able to complete Burlington PS’s climate survey engagements—just under one month from opening the surveys to reporting on the results—Conti and Conceison are looking forward to using ThoughtExchange for a wide range of engagement use cases, including larger ones, like future climate surveys, and smaller ones, like ad hoc engagements and follow-ups on district decisions and programs.
“I usually do a community survey about my performance every year. So we're going to use ThoughtExchange for that,” Conti shares. He’s aware that opening up a forum for community discussion on his leadership requires vulnerability. Still, he wants the highest-quality data to ensure he’s doing his best as a leader.
“I see ThoughtExchange as a way to navigate complex times,” he shares. “We all have blind spots—and leadership is different today than when I started. ThoughtExchange is a tool that helps me see my own blind spots and empower others.”
Conti also uses ThoughtExchange as a staff engagement tool to gather fast, in-depth insights from his team—and sees the platform as essential to his district’s direction. By providing an unbiased digital forum for staff to share their perspectives with him and lightning-fast analysis to help direct his decision-making, Conti believes ThoughtExchange will facilitate the evolution of his team and his leadership.
“My role is the Chief Child Advocate in town. I try to bring on talented people, like Ms. Conceison, and they're really setting the specific course we take. And the more diverse my team grows, the more time we spend discussing our values and what our priorities should be. ThoughtExchange helps guide us so we all work together. Not to replace conversations, but as a supplemental way to ensure that I'm not making assumptions formed by my life experience when that may not reflect everyone else's.”
ThoughtExchange has more than a decade of community engagement experience in the education space. We’ve worked with thousands of leaders to facilitate deeper engagement and faster data analysis so they can take instant action on the things that matter most to their educational partners.
See what ThoughtExchange can do for your district’s engagement.
