| The Research Alliance for New York City Schools |
| Redesigning the Annual NYC School Survey:
Improving Measures of School Climate through a Strong Research-Practice Partnership |
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Research shows that certain schoolwide characteristics—such as student-centered learning environments, leadership, and safety—can be important for improving student outcomes. Many districts, including New York City, are attempting to measure these aspects of school climate using surveys that capture the perspectives of students, parents, and teachers.
On February 12th, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced the launch of the 12th annual NYC School Survey. The Survey—the largest education census in the United States—provides important information about the school climate in the district’s 1,800 schools.
Building on a pre-existing collaboration, the Research Alliance has worked closely with the NYC Department of Education (DOE) to help develop its Framework for Great Schools and to redesign the NYC School Survey, with a focus on capturing information about the Framework’s key elements. Our analyses show that the new Survey is a much stronger instrument as a result of the redesign.
The highly collaborative process between the Research Alliance and the NYC DOE demonstrates how a robust research-practice partnership can inform school district decisions and create useful measurement tools for the field. The Research Alliance has documented some of this work through our Redesigning the Annual NYC School Survey collection, which includes a policy brief highlighting key lessons from the partnership. Other materials in the collection provide details about the redesign process (e.g., how measures were selected; the feedback we received via parent, teacher and student focus groups; how the measures performed initially and were refined in subsequent versions of the surveys; and an exploration of different strategies for analyzing survey results). We hope these resources are useful to other districts that are developing school surveys, as well as local stakeholders who are interested in learning more about NYC’s survey efforts. |
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| The Research Alliance for New York City Schools is a nonpartisan research center housed at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The Research Alliance conducts rigorous studies on topics that matter to the city’s public schools. The organization strives to advance equity and excellence in education by providing evidence about policies and practices that promote students' development and academic success.
Learn More at Our Website |
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