Speakers:

• Madison Lanpher (Moderator, Senior Manager, Demand Generation, SchoolStatus)
• Dr. Jennifer de Forest (YouthTruth)
• Dr. Kara Stern (SchoolStatus)

Moderator (Madison): Now, we are very fortunate to have two distinguished experts with us today. First, I’d love to introduce Dr. Jennifer de Forest, Director of Organizational Learning and Communications at Youth Truth. Jen, could you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?

Dr. Jennifer de Forest: Thanks, Madison. It’s really great to be here. I’m a former teacher, principal, professor, and now I work at this amazing organization called Youth Truth, where we amplify student voices through our core instrument, the survey of the student experience, and through research. Our purpose is to help schools to understand the student experience directly from those who know it best – the students themselves.

Moderator: We’re so glad to have you with us. And joining us also is Dr. Kara Stern, Director of Education and Engagement at SchoolStatus. Kara?

Dr. Kara Stern: Thanks, Madison. Happy to be here. At SchoolStatus, we focus on empowering educators with tools and insights they need for effective family engagement. And like Jen, I was a teacher and a principal, but not a professor. And I do want to say that Jen and I have been friends and collaborators for almost 30 years since grad school. So it’s been really fun to see how our work intersects in supporting stronger school communities.

Moderator: Awesome. And, you know, it’s really wonderful to see such a longstanding relationship culminating in this collaboration. Before we dive into our main topic though, could you both briefly explain your respective surveys and why you’ve come together for this webinar?

Dr. Stern: Sure. So at SchoolStatus, we recently surveyed just over a thousand K-12 educators and administrators from all over the country, alongside a parallel survey of 1,000 families. The purpose was really to understand what’s happening in school-home communications, what’s working, what isn’t, and where the opportunities are to build stronger engagement.

Dr. de Forest: And over at Youth Truth, we’ve been gathering student perception data since 2008. At this point, we’ve surveyed over 3 million students and every school year we produce at least one piece of major research that draws on this kind of growing body of aggregate data. Recent topics that we’ve plumbed have included tracking trends in the student experience through the pandemic, youth perceptions of their own emotional and mental health, and just most recently, high school students perceptions of their own civic empowerment or disempowerment.

Moderator: Awesome. So, you know, together you’re really providing this unique 360 degree view of the education landscape. That’s amazing. Okay, so today we will be covering five key areas: the communication triangle between schools, families, and students; how to build meaningful connections; strategies for supporting the whole child; ways to empower communities; and finally creating sustainable change. And we will end with time for your questions. With that, let’s go ahead and get started. Kara, I’m going to pass it over to you.

Dr. Stern: Okay, thanks. So let’s start by exploring why building stronger school-family partnerships is really so critical now more than maybe it ever has been. Our latest survey research at SchoolStatus shows a very interesting paradox that while 77% of educators rate family communication as absolutely critical to student success, most of them are also struggling to make it happen effectively. Only 25% of those educators find it easy to connect with families, and just 37% feel they have the complete information they need about their students. And this isn’t just a data point. It’s really a call to action.

Dr. de Forest: And I can, as they say, complexify that a little bit with the student voice. Since the pandemic, our data reveals that students have experienced a real roller coaster in student-teacher relationships. We were quite surprised that at the onset of COVID, students actually reported a significant 17% jump in their feelings that their teachers made an effort to understand their lives outside of school. And they actually peaked that survey item during the pandemic in the spring of 2020. That number unfortunately declined through the pandemic and it has stabilized at a really lackluster 28% of students reporting that their teachers understand their lives outside of school. So that is cause for reflection on this COVID era improvement in students’ perceptions of their relationships and underscores what we see as a real opportunity to strengthen school-home relationships.

Dr. Stern: I think it’s so interesting how your findings mirror what we’re hearing from educators, that the spike in understanding in COVID really shows us what’s possible when teachers get glimpses into students’ home lives. And I know for example, for my own kids, their teacher showed up at our door with a mask to just have some interaction with them face to face. So I think that the challenge for us now is really thinking about how to create those connection points without a crisis driving them.

Dr. de Forest: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s really that power of empathy. And we saw that during COVID.

Moderator: Yeah. So we would love to hear from you, our participants, before we dive deeper. Will you share with us what your biggest challenge is in school-family partnerships? Just take a moment to vote using the options on your screen. We know educators face multiple challenges. We’re curious to hear what resonates the most with you. There’s building consistent communication bridges, supporting whole child needs effectively, empowering student and family voice, measuring impact and sustaining change, and multiple challenges across these areas. And I think from my time as a principal, I would have chosen number five. Jen, what about you?

Dr. de Forest: Oh, for sure. Number five.

Moderator: All right, so I guess we will find out in a minute if we are not alone in choosing that. And… Kara, how are we doing on responses?

Dr. Stern: I think we’re ready to share the results. Go ahead.

Moderator: All right.

Dr. Stern: People were with us, Jen, multiple challenges across these areas, with building consistent communication bridges next. Luckily, we’re going to talk about all of these things and I hope that when you sign off this webinar, you’ll have some great actionable ideas that you can implement really starting tomorrow.

Dr. Stern: So with that, let’s keep going. I want to take a look at what I’ve been thinking of as the communication triangle. From the educator perspective, while teachers really value family engagement, only 25% of them find it easy to connect with families. And then something additional that’s quite concerning, 43% of them aren’t even sure if their messages are reaching families at all.

Dr. de Forest: Yeah, and in the background from the student perspective, that resonates as students are reporting that only 42% of them feel like they are really a part of their school community. And it’s important to note also that nearly half of secondary students are now citing mental health as an obstacle to their learning.

Dr. Stern: Well, I think that, you know, the relationship between these belonging trends and what they tell us about family communication is so interesting. And when we dig into our data, we see that schools with higher student belonging rates are often the same ones using more personalized communication approaches. So for example, when educators can send quick updates in families’ preferred languages and get confirmation that their messages are reaching home, they’re better able to build those relationships that support student belonging. And I think it’s really important, especially in high schools, whereas your data shows, Jen, like the belonging rates are plummeting.

Moderator: All right. Well, thank you both. Now let’s explore how we can strengthen these connections, starting with that student belonging. So Jen, I’m going to toss it over to you.

Dr. de Forest: Sure. Just a little bit more context on trends in student belonging. Students’ perception of belonging in school also peaked in fall of 2020, surprisingly. And as I mentioned prior, only 42% of secondary students reported feeling a sense of belonging in their school community last year. And the differences within student groups are also really important to note. So in smaller schools, students tend to have more robust feelings of belonging compared to larger schools. More middle school students also report a sense of belonging than high school students. And it’s notable that LGBTQ+ students report lower belonging, only 35% of them say they really feel like part of their school’s community, which compares less favorably when you compare that to other groups of students, including white students as one example, and students overall as well.

Dr. Stern: That’s really like significant implications for student outcomes right there.

Dr. de Forest: Yeah, it really is. We often say asking students about their perceptions of whether or not they feel like they’re part of their community and many other items, it’s not only the right thing to do because it’s ethical to ask folks in a system about their experiences, but it’s also really smart. We know that these sorts of student perception data are predictive of really important outcomes. They’re predictive of things like grades and graduation rates and also school level outcomes, including really importantly chronic absenteeism. And just to like boil it down and oversimplify, in schools where students report strong relationships with their teachers, where they report a strong sense of belonging and high academic engagement, things like absenteeism rates are lower.

Dr. Stern: Well, that makes sense. Looking at our data, we saw a really fascinating mismatch in how schools try to reach families versus what families actually want. And so while nearly 70% of families prefer text messages, only about 22% of educators regularly use texting. You know, I think as more and more of the parent demographic in schools is a millennial population, we really need to think about the fact that millennials are communicating differently from the parent generation that came before them.

And then educators themselves are facing real barriers. As I mentioned earlier, 43% aren’t sure if their messages are reaching families. 38% struggle with time constraints. And then a full third face language barriers. And it’s so… it’s very dramatic how these challenges intensify in secondary schools where teachers are trying to manage communications with many, many more families.

Dr. de Forest: Yeah, and that’s really reflected in what students report to us. Across virtually all of our research projects, what we see is that students’ reports of their caregiver or their parents’ level of education, which is of course like a proxy for socioeconomic status, is associated with more favorable student perceptions of the school experience. One thing this can inform is Kara’s point that school-home communication strategies need to be responsive to the diverse backgrounds and needs of families to make sure that every family actually hears the messages that the school is putting out.