The survey, which is administered annually, provides valuable feedback from students, family, and teachers across the city on the successes and areas of growth of the school year.  In total, this year’s survey captured the feedback of 19,767 students, 2,593 teachers, and 12,420 family members.  

The 2022 survey results convey a story of continued support and dialogue around student well-being as school communities enter into the third year of the global pandemic, while also identifying key improvement areas including the connection and care that students feel within schools.

 

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KEY SURVEY TERMS

• Percent Favorable: The primary measure used to determine how students, families, and teachers feel about a particular question or topic.  A typical question contains five answer choices, of which the top 2 are considered favorable.  A high percent favorable typically indicates positive perceptions around a particular topic. 
• Survey Topic: Each survey topic consists of several questions around a particular theme.  The results of these questions are then averaged to create the topic score.

 

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SPRING 2022 SURVERY RESULTS

• Nearly 60% of students and 70% of families had favorable perceptions of how often students learn about and discuss issues of race, ethnicity, and culture in schools. 

• Over 80% of surveyed teachers had favorable perceptions of their readiness to fully support all learners. This topic includes:

  • How well teachers support students with unique learning needs

  • Comfort with incorporating material about people from different backgrounds

  • How comfortable teachers are having conversations about race

• Secondary students report perceptions of safety at levels exceeding nationwide averages

• Highlights amongst elementary students included favorable perceptions that school is interesting, important and useful, (67%) as well as how much students feel that they are valued members of the school community (63%). 

• Families responded positively to questions about School Climate (78% favorable) Family-School Communication (77% favorable) which include:

  • How frequent and helpful communications are, as well as how comfortable parents feel contacting their school

  • Learning environment, respect and valuing of diversity

 

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PARTICIPATION

• Participation across students, teachers, and families increased significantly from the last time the survey was administered in Spring 2021. 

• The majority of student voices were included in the 2022 survey results.  In particular,. Students in grade 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 are significantly more represented (20+ percentage points increase) compared to last year. 

• Over 30% more teacher voices and nearly 4% more family voices were included in 2022 versus the 2021 survey.  Representation for Asian teachers increased while representation for families of students with IEP’s and students identified as English learners decreased.

• White families continue to be overrepresented in the Family survey (by about 9 percentage points)
  

 

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COMPARISONS ACROSS STUDENT, TEACHER AND FAMILY PERCEPTIONS

• Families with children who identified as Latinx had more favorable perceptions across the majority of topics surveyed compared to the district average, while families with children who identified as multi-racial had less favorable perceptions across the majority of surveyed topics versus the district average. 

• Families of students who identified as Black or African American, or Asian, had less favorable perceptions of how often students learn about, discuss, and confront issues of race, ethnicity, and culture in school versus the district average.

 

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AREAS OF GROWTH

Areas of growth exist in improving how safe elementary students feel at school, how much secondary students feel that they are valued members of their school community and the overall working environment of teachers. 

• Only a third of secondary students responded favorably when asked how much they matter to others at their school. 

• Less than half of teachers responded favorably when asked how positive their overall working environment is at their school as well as how positive are the attitudes of their colleagues. 

• While nearly 80% of students responded favorably to feeling supported by adults at their school, only slightly more than 50% of students had favorable perceptions around how much respect other students show them at school. 

• Similarly, while more than three-quarters of students feel that they are encouraged to think more deeply about race-related topics at school, less than 40% feel comfortable sharing their thoughts about race-related topics with other students at school. 

• Black students responded less favorably to School Safety than other racial/ethic groups by more 8 percentage points.

 

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

View your school’s results and to learn more, visit www.bostonpublicschools.org/survey. Schools with less than 30% participation on an individual survey’s results are not displayed. Group sizes of less than 10 are also masked to maintain confidentiality. For more information, please contact surveys@bostonpublicschools.org

 

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