Research Center Blog

This next set of posts, the second in our six-part research series, will answer three questions:

1. What factors matter most when you want to retain your best staff?
2. What factors matter most when you want to ensure parents are highly satisfied?
3. What factors matter most when you want to ensure students are highly engaged?

Earlier in September, we discussed which parent survey items scored the highest and lowest and which items increased and decreased the most year-over-year. (If you missed that one, start here.)

When we present data like that to a school district, we almost always hear, “This is really valuable. Where should we begin? What should we fix first?”

This blog answers that for you as it relates to parents. (To see the staff “what should you fix first” post, click here.) Knowing how to maximize parents’ satisfaction is key in an era of school competition. Parents can and do “shop around,” whether it’s open enrolling into a different district, charter schools, private schools, or even moving.

What affects whether a parent would recommend your schools?

There may be some common, perceived reasons parents would be willing to recommend your schools.

• Enrollment (if I feel like my kid is lost in a gigantic sea of other students, am I going to be pleased with that?)
• Student-teacher ratio (I probably don’t want my kid in a class so big they can never get help when they need it.)
• Achievement (what parent wouldn’t want their kid to go to a well-performing, rigorous school?)
• Salary (maybe well-paid teachers are more likely to stay and gain good experience?)
• Community wealth (perhaps a school in a wealthy community has access to better resources, like after-school programming and tutoring?)
• Locale (is there a perception that small, rural schools are “better” than large urban ones?)

Maybe these affect parents’ satisfaction and maybe they don’t, but here’s the problem: you don’t have much (if any) control over these things, especially in the short term. You can’t change the wealth of the broader community. You aren’t going to move your school to the suburbs. 

The good news, though, is that these uncontrollable factors only explain about 41% of the “willing to recommend you” variance – even less variance than they did for staff.

So, while these factors matter, there are lot of things you can do to improve parents’ satisfaction that are very much within your control. (Stats a little rusty? Miss our explainer in the staff post? See the R2 explainer in the box below. Otherwise, skip it!)

 

Variance Explained? Huh?   Let’s say I tell you that I can predict exactly how many touchdown passes Jordan Love) will throw this year and that the only data point I need is the number of hours he practiced this offseason. If I’m correct year after year, I’ve explained 100% of the variance (R2 = 100%). I don’t need to know any other piece of information to make a perfect prediction. Take the other extreme. Maybe practice hours have absolutely nothing to do with how many TDs he throws. In that case, practicing explains 0% of the variance (R2 = 0%). In reality, the time spent practicing is one of many things that affect TD passes. Practice might explain, say, 15% of the variance, but to make near-perfect predictions, I’d want to know a bunch of other things: how good his receivers are, what the weather is for each game, if he (and his receivers) is healthy, how good our opponents are, and so on. The goal is simplicity: get as close to 100% as possible with as few variables as possible.

 

What should you fix that is within your control?

This gets us back to our initial question: If you get some scores back that aren’t what you want them to be, what should you fix first to ensure parents have high levels of satisfaction with your schools?  

• The school has high expectations for my child.
• District administration is doing what it takes to make our district successful.
• I’m satisfied with how much my child is learning.
• My child feels safe at school.
• My child gets help when they need it.
• The school provides opportunities for parental involvement.
• School communication is both timely and transparent.
• I feel welcome in my child’s school.

There are clear themes here. Parents want their child’s academics to be challenging, they want their schools to be safe, and they want two-way communication (you going to them and them going to you).

Revisiting our R2 metric above, together, the survey items listed above explain 90% of the “willing to recommend” variance. In other words, with just a few questions, we can almost perfectly predict whether someone would recommend your schools to a friend or family member.

 

What’s a “good” R2?   Human behavior is notoriously difficult to predict. We’re complicated creatures. We’re all a little strange, illogical, irrational, and inefficient. Thus, in social science research, if we can explain 50% of the variance (R2 = 0.50), we’re in great shape. The fact that we reached 90% (R2 = 0.90) is thrilling for us nerdy data folks.

Coming up, one of our project managers, Scott Girard, will tell you who’s doing great work in these most-impactful areas, and, more importantly, how? What, exactly, are they doing? That’s the practitioner side of things. At the same time, our Senior Research Director, Derek Gottlieb, will couple Scott’s work with what peer-reviewed research is saying about what you need to do to keep your best staff.

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The School Perceptions Blog and Resource Center features the voices of our team members. This post was written by Rob DeMeuse, Vice President of Research.