The Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has released a report describing Illinois public school districts’ use of the 5Essentials Survey and data.
Starting with the 2012-2013 school year, Illinois public schools were required to administer a biennial learning conditions and climate survey. This 5Essentials (5E) Survey, developed by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, measures K-12 schools’ instructional environment, based on teachers’ and students’ input (parents’ input is optional), to inform schools’ improvement processes.
“Illinois currently has a positive environment in which districts are interested in collecting school climate data from their stakeholders,” noted lead author Brenda Klostermann, associate director of the IERC. “The ability to cultivate these positive attitudes to increase use of the 5Essentials data, or other climate survey data, will be greatly influenced by addressing the concerns of its stakeholders and providing needed support.”
To gauge the extent to which Illinois public schools are utilizing the 5E results, the IERC interviewed school leaders and school improvement team members from 15 selected districts throughout the state and analyzed responses from superintendents and principals in a statewide online survey.
District participants were asked about their uses of the 5E data, reasons for not using the 5E data, perceived value of the 5E Survey, preferences for training, levels of support, and recommendations to improve the 5E Survey and implementation. Superintendents and principals in the statewide survey answered questions about their opinions of and experiences with the 5E data and reports.
The research highlights included:
- Some education stakeholders found value in the 5E data, because it provided data from multiple perspectives and informed their school planning activities, although this was not true for the majority of the participants.
- Use of the 5E results is still in early stages of adoption for many districts in which usage was primarily limited to general discussion about districts’ strengths and weaknesses. A few districts were advanced 5E data users and implemented programs based on their 5E results.
- Reasons for not utilizing the 5E data included concerns about credibility of the data, access to a local or national climate survey, and participants feeling overwhelmed with the numerous new education initiatives in the state.
- Districts/schools that highly value the 5E Survey data and reports, and those that perceive the survey items to be of interest to their district/school, are those that also have higher 5E data use for school planning purposes.
“This IERC report provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges and successes that surround the use of the 5Essentials data for school improvement in Illinois,” said Janet Holt, IERC executive director. “The results indicate several positive ways in which the data are being used. The suggestions for improvement indicate several promising avenues for supporting and scaling up these best practices statewide.”
Suggestions for improving the 5E Survey and data included marketing the survey to motivate participation and utilization, improving survey items, adjusting the timing of the survey and providing more actionable feedback.
Some activities and policy changes have already occurred to address the concerns voiced by the district participants and survey respondents. For example, the 2015 5E Survey administration dates have been moved to earlier in the spring term. In addition, Public Act 098-0648 was recently modified to allow school districts to elect to use an alternate survey, which requires pre-approved by the Illinois State Board of Education.
Additional strategies to increase 5E data utilization include additional training and external resources to increase districts’ capacity to analyze and apply the 5E results to school improvement planning. These may be particularly needed in districts with fewer data supports and emerging data-infused cultures.
The complete report, as well as other IERC reports, is available atsiue.edu/ierc.
For more information, contact Klostermann at (618) 650-2840 or (866) 799-4372.