Bend-La Pine School Board discusses, reviews YouthTruth student survey results
(Update: Adding video, comments from meeting)
Students' perceptions are surveyed, compared to elsewhere
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The Bend-La Pine School Board held a work session Tuesday evening to get an understanding and a sense of how students are feeling about school by taking a look at their YouthTruth survey answers.
There was a presentation on the results of the YouthTruth Student Survey (Agenda item 5).
The YouthTruth student survey is a national nonprofit founded in 2008. The organization says, "YouthTruth harnesses student perceptions to help educators and education funders accelerate improvements."
The survey has seven themes: engagement, academic challenge, culture, relationships, belonging and peer collaboration, college and career readiness, and emotional and mental health.
For each theme, local results are compared with schools nationally to see how students rate their school. It also compares students feelings on those themes in terms of remote vs. in-person learning.
The survey rating scores are measured as 1, 3, and 5. 1 was never content, 3 was sometimes content, and 5 was content all the time.
During the meeting, board members were given a chance to speak their thoughts on the results.
"Only in the area of belonging and career-ready was it better now than it was last year, " board member Shirley Olson board member said. "Everything else was not huge -- differential, but at least notable."
There's something he district does really well.
"That was really clear last year. It's really clear this year," Dave VanLoo, director of school improvement said. "I mean, that is something that Bend-La Pine District does really well, is establish really strong relationships and culture."
As always, the board discussed how best to use the survey results to help guide programs and decisions
"Where do we see this and where do we want this to go, and how we want to measure progress as a board," said board member Melissa Barnes Dholakia.
The YouthTruth survey has already led to some local success. The Crook County School District used its survey results in its effort to increase attendance.
