Press Release
For many years, Carbon School District has been looking for ways to include community and parental input on their programs, personnel and operations. Recently, the district teamed up with the Southeast Educational Service Center, the Utah State Board of Education and the University of Utah to create a portal with which parents can have input into what they see is going on in schools and classrooms.
“This is a good way for parents to have input on what is going on in their schools and in the classrooms where their students are,” said Carbon School District Superintendent Steve Carlsen.
Beginning Jan. 12, Carbon School District will be opening a portal which will administer school climate surveys for grades three to 12. The purpose of the survey at that portal is to gather stakeholder input about teachers, principals and schools in the district. Participation in the survey is open to all guardians and parents of students currently attending those grades in schools in the district. These surveys look at many aspects of a school including safety, school climate, general information about the principals involvement and connection with parents, and the conscientiousness, communication and learning support the teachers provide.
The survey includes general multiple choice questions about the schools, about the administration and the parent can also comment about both more open ended questions about the kind of experience their child is having in individual classrooms and with individual teachers. The responses to the survey are anonymous and the survey collects no personal information about those responding. The survey is short, usually only taking up to about 10 minutes to complete.
The information from the surveys will be used by the districts administration, principals and teachers to improve the educational experience students in the district are getting.
For those that do not have a computer, parents are encouraged to come to the school and take the survey where there will be a computer set up for those purposes. It can also be taken on any public computer such as those available at a public library. The survey is available in English and Spanish.
Interested parties can access the survey by entering into their browser the https://bit.ly/1MrDEvC. There will also be a link on each schools web site for the survey.
The survey is part of the Utah Teacher Evaluation System. That system contains three parts including the evaluation of teachers by their principal or administrator (70% of score), a part based on student performance growth in their classrooms (20%) and input from stakeholders (10%). Stakeholders include parents, students and peers in the educational system.
All the items on the survey are based on educational theory, are reflective, short, positively framed and unambiguous.
The survey will be open for responses from Jan. 12, 2016 to Jan. 22, 2016.
Results from the survey will be posted on-line at a later date (which will be announced) and will compare results from Carbon District with averages across the state.