Head of School's Blogs
Parent Survey
by Bill Gerritz 30 March, 2007
Ten days have passed since I began this half blog. Good news, an ISB parent sent me a lovely e-mail appreciating what I had written about our teachers. What I wrote about teachers on March 20th was opinion informed by about 3,000 classroom visits over the past 5 years. However, I could have backed up my opinions from our survey data.
Each year about this time, we survey all current ISB parents. Sixty to seventy percent of families respond. Our Board of Trustees and Leadership Team pour over the results looking for patterns and changes. The numerical results are analyzed in several ways. We read and reread the more than 1,000 written comments looking for themes. If you looked at our annual school improvement targets, you would see that several of them are framed in terms of the parent survey.
As head of school, I try to listen and understand parents' views on ISB. Although First Fridays with Bill and casual conversations with parents around school are consistently informative, I find that parent survey results to be more thorough and compelling. Sometimes the news from the survey is good. Sometimes it is bad. But it is always useful in deciding our next steps guiding ISB to be the school it can and should be.
If you would like to agree, disagree, or extend what I write here, please contact me by e-mail at (billg@isb.ac.th). Whenever possible, I will comment on your ideas in my next half-blog
Read more post from the Head of School's BlogsAbout the Author
Bill received his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He has written over 20 journal articles and has an abiding interest in learning improvement. Prior to ISB, Bill headed schools in Holland and South America. He and his wife Marcia have 3 sons.
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