The survey, which is administered annually, provides valuable feedback from students, family, and staff members across the city on the successes and areas of growth of the most recent school year. In total, this year’s survey captured the feedback of 20,990 students, 4,497 teachers and educational staff, and 11,410 family members.

The 2023 survey results convey a story of increased perceptions of support from educators across all grade levels, while also highlighting school safety and the belonging that students feel within schools as continued areas of growth.

Key Survey Terms:

• Percent Favorable: The primary measure used to determine how students, families, and staff 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.
• Representativeness: How well the demographics of respondents represent the overall demographics of Boston’s school community.

Participation:

• 6% more student voices were included in the 2023 survey versus the 2022 survey.
• Over 13% more teacher voices were included in 2023 versus the 2022 survey, and non-instructional school staff were surveyed for the first time, capturing 1,579 additional voices.
• Asian families are well represented in the survey, while Latinx families are under-presented. (44% of our families are Latinx, only 30% of survey participants are Latinx.)
• Families with a Multilingual Learner or a student with disabilities are well represented in the survey.

Student Perceptions:t

• Highlights amongst elementary students included increased perceptions of how supported they feel by adults at school as well as their ability to persevere through setbacks to achieve important long-term goals.
• Additionally, nearly 60% of elementary students responded favorably to how well people at school understand them as a person, an increase from 2022.
• While secondary students’ perceptions of Sense of Belonging decreased slightly from 2022, they responded with a 3 percentage point improvement in how connected they feel to adults at their school.
• However, nearly half of all elementary students responded that they sometimes, frequently, or almost always worry about violence at their school. And 44% of secondary students responded favorably when asked how much they feel like they belong at their school, a decrease of 2 percentage points from 2022.

Teacher and Staff Perceptions:

• Teachers demonstrated an increase from 66% to 68% responding favorably around relationships with the families at their school, while 61% of school staff responded favorably.
• Additionally, teachers also had improved perceptions around School Climate from 2022 to 2023.
• Elementary teachers had more favorable perceptions across all surveyed topics compared to both high school and middle school teachers.
• Teachers who identified as Latinx or with more than 15 years of experience had more favorable perceptions across the majority of surveyed topics compared to the district wide average.
• Over 50% of teachers responded that students are very frequently, regularly, or occasionally bullied at school.

Family Perceptions:

• Family member perceptions of how well a school matches their child’s developmental needs improved by 2 percentage points from 72% to 74% responding favorably.
• While over 90% of families responded favorably to questions around how welcoming schools are to parents, nearly half of all family members reported how busy their schedules are as a challenge to school involvement.
• Families of Latinx students had more favorable perceptions than the districtwide average across almost all surveyed topics.

Comparisons Across Student, Teacher and Family Perceptions

• BPS family members had more favorable perceptions of School Safety (71%) compared to both elementary (52%) and secondary students (61%).
• While family members (78%) had more favorable perceptions of School Climate than teachers (57%), teachers reported strong perceptions around how respectful teacher-student relationships are (68%), as well as the extent to which they are trusted to teach in the way they think is best (65%).
• Family members also had more favorable perceptions of how often students learn about, discuss, and confront issues of race, ethnicity, and culture in school than students.

Additional Information:

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.

For school summaries translated in each language, click below: 

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