Student Voice Survey

[00:01] SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined again today by Dr. Russell Qualia. Dr. Qualia is the founder and director of the Qualia Institute for Student Aspirations and is America's foremost authority on the development and achievement of student voice and aspirations.

[00:31] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:33] SPEAKER_01:

Russ, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks, Justin. It's great to be back. Yeah, so we're here to talk today not about one of your many books on student or educator voice, but specifically about your student voice survey. And I know one of the big things that people take away from your books is some of the trends, some of the big picture data about what students tend to say about their aspirations, about the conditions that affect their learning. And you share and report on national trends in the data that you've collected.

[01:03]

But you also have a survey that allows schools to collect data and input from their very own students. And that's what we're here to talk about today. So to kick things off, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about why schools should consider surveying their students, not in the sense of how often are you bullied or things like that, but to really get at their voice and aspirations. I wonder if you could set that up for us a bit.

[01:27] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think... It's interesting to me that when we interview students or we ask students their opinions, it almost seems like it's a last resort. When I try to remind people that the students in the school, they're our greatest resource. And the mantra that's been driving me in the work for years now is that students have something to teach us.

[01:48]

It makes a lot of sense to a lot of people, except sadly, the majority of students don't believe teachers are willing to learn from students. So on the one hand, I'm getting students to say – or getting them to think, your voice matters. Share what you think. Be out there. Stand up for a cause. And then the flip side of that, they're telling me, well, you know what?

[02:07]

Half the teachers don't care what I say. And so it's a little bit of a catch-22, quite frankly, where I'm trying to push the importance of student voice for the students. Yet their belief is that teachers are not willing to listen and learn from them. Now, I believe teachers are willing to listen to learn from students, but the perceptions of students is that they're not. So there's a lot of work there to bridge that gap.

[02:29] SPEAKER_01:

What are some of the questions that we need to be attuned to as educators? The things that our students will share with us if we ask that we need to hear and that we need to kind of open our ears to.

[02:41] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Justin, three themes. Let me get into the themes, and then I think I can get more specifically into the questions. When we look at the instrument, the student voice survey, three themes emerge for us. One is that students want to know or want us to know that I matter. I matter as an individual. The second thing they want us to know is that we matter collectively.

[03:03]

So as a group of students, what we say matters. And the third thing, and this is the interesting thing that really takes teachers back, quite frankly, is that you matter to them. So I matter as a student, as an individual. We matter collectively as a group. and you matter to me as a student, you being the teacher. And I share those themes, and then I get into some of the data with the teachers and say, for example, the I matter.

[03:29]

We have kids telling us, teachers make an effort to get to know me. It's 57%. Here's what's interesting about that. That number is 20% higher when they're in the 6th and 7th grade compared to when they're in the 11th and 12th grade. So what we see What we see is this downward trend. The longer kids are in school, the less connectedness they're having with their teachers.

[03:54]

Logic would tell you it should be the opposite, quite frankly. We have questions like, teacher cares about me as an individual. The one I always harp on, and this is the big I thing for me, is we ask the question, do teachers care if you're absent from school? That's 50%. Half the students in our country don't think we care if they even show up. So I tell people all the time, you know, before you get your pants in a bunch about meeting all these testing requirements and so on and standards and this, that, and the other thing, let's first let these kids know that it matters to us that they're even there.

[04:28]

And we're not doing very well at that, quite frankly.

[04:30] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it almost seems like giving a survey or seeking student voice in the first place sends an important message to students. Have you found that to be the case, that students just appreciate being asked?

[04:42] SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. And that is exactly the point about the notion of we matter. Kids know they matter if they're being asked what they think about something. And that's something we don't do enough of. Or if we do – and this is the problem – If we do, what it comes down to is this notion of almost like window dressing. Well, you know, I'm supposed to ask your opinion.

[05:03]

We're going to do a survey. Survey's done. Check. Rather than saying, we're going to do a survey. And the same thing is true with our survey. We tell schools all the time, don't give them this student voice survey if you're not going to do anything with it.

[05:16]

What you should do is give the survey, share the data back with the students and the staff, Talk about what makes sense and what doesn't because some of the data is going to come back that's not going to make any sense to anyone. Well, instead of burying it, you have a conversation. And say, for example, 40% of the kids say teachers don't care about me. Well, talk about it. Obviously, teachers care about the students, but the perception of students is that they don't. So then you have these discussions.

[05:41]

Once you have these discussions, then you got to go back again as a group and say, here's what the data is telling us. Here's our mission statement. Now that's a novel thought for schools to do to go back to their mission statement. But here's our mission statement. What doesn't match up? What can't we live with?

[05:57]

You know, if you're promoting lifelong learning and getting to know your students and you find in the data that that's not happening, well, that's something you need to concentrate on. So the survey becomes this instrument or tool to not only measure what's going on, but really creates almost a roadmap of what needs to happen next.

[06:13] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, I want to come back to the issue of follow-up and making sure that we're actually responding to what we learn from students. But I appreciate what you said about data that doesn't make sense because I think sometimes we get into this kind of paralysis when we see data that doesn't make sense and we just take it as truth and we don't seek an understanding. We don't have that conversation. And my friend Thomas Canola advises startups. And one time I saw someone ask him, what's the best tool to survey your customers?

[06:46]

And he said, the telephone. He said, pick up the phone, call a customer, have a conversation with them. And the person who asked the question thought he was kind of being a smart aleck. And he said, no, I'm serious. I think if you want to understand your customers, and I think if we in schools want to understand our students, it's not enough to have the big picture data without that conversation and without that understanding that can get into some of the confusing patterns. And I wonder if you have an example for us of data that comes back and a school looks at it and says, you know, we don't know what this means.

[07:19]

We don't know what to make of this. How have you seen that play out? And what was the conversation that followed?

[07:24] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the one example, and I alluded alluded to it earlier, is the one that really jumps out at teachers about the caring piece. When we ask students, do teachers care about you as an individual? And, you know, the majority say no. Yet when we ask teachers, do you care about your kids? You know, it's 90 some odd percent. Of course we do.

[07:44]

That's why we're teachers. So the disparity opens up an opportunity for discussion. And what we found through the discussion is this. We go to the students, we say, listen, your teachers care about you. They come in early, they grade in your papers, they're going to get a master's degree, blah, blah. Students' response to that is, yeah, whatever, that's their job.

[08:05]

And until you really dig deep to the students, say, well, what does it mean for a teacher to care about you? This is what they tell us. Say hi to me by my name. Now, that's a pretty basic thing. It doesn't happen. So say hi to me by name.

[08:22]

Ask me how I'm doing and wait for a response. Another thing that seems pretty basic, but how many times do you walk by someone? Hey, how are you? No, how are you? No, I don't care. I don't care either.

[08:32]

So they, they want someone to just know who they are. The notion of having to teach and know a kid's hopes and dreams. All of a sudden you now care about me as an individual. I matter to you. It goes back to the, I matter. We matter.

[08:45]

You matter. Um, So there's an example of just one data point that by digging deeper, teachers are now acting differently in a number of different schools. They're making it a point to say the student's name. They're making it a point that when a kid is absent, they'll go up to the student and say, I hope you're doing okay. Let me know if I can help with anything. That takes four seconds.

[09:07]

It's not a time issue. It's a priority issue is to let these kids know that they matter. And what we've seen, interestingly enough, Justin, is a little different from what you explained earlier. in the schools, when data doesn't make sense to people, they don't perceive it as truth. They perceive it as not the truth. They just say, oh, well, the kids don't know.

[09:28]

That's just their perception. And I jump out of my seat. I'm like, no, no, no. It's truth. It is their perception. And their perception is truth in their eyes.

[09:38]

So don't write off data you don't understand as saying, Well, this doesn't matter. It's just their perception. I say, yeah, no, it is. It's right. It is their perception. But their perception is 100% reality to them.

[09:51]

And we need to deal with it.

[09:52] SPEAKER_01:

Right. Because when we're talking about the student experience, it doesn't matter what we intended for the student experience to be. It matters what it actually is. And I think there are lots of examples of how that plays out. like with support services, for example. If we intend for all of the services that we're providing for a student to be helpful, but they experience fragmentation or they have a disruption to their day, something we see in the medical profession as well, that we have all these doctors and nurses and specialists coming in to help, but it can leave patients feeling very fragmented, and it's only by actually talking to them and hearing from them You know, what's that experience like that we can make better decisions?

[10:31] SPEAKER_00:

Right. And so the question becomes, I think, that if I'm listening to this, the question for me would be the so what factor. Yeah, it's the nice thing to do. Let kids know they matter. Let them know they matter as individuals. Yeah, it's nice to know that I matter as a teacher.

[10:46]

But what's the end game in here? Well, here is the end game. When I believe as a student, if I have a voice, I am seven times more likely to be motivated to learn. Seven times more likely to be motivated to learn. That's the holy grail. And, you know, there's people like John Hattie and the visible learning people that follow him.

[11:07]

I love John's work. And people like Andrea Slechter out of PISA, they're all talking about the impact that student voice has on achievement issues. And, you know, I didn't look at student voice as an achievement issue, except I was smart enough to realize I needed to make that connection to get the policymakers on board so that this isn't, you know, some school climate story like, oh, we're supposed to do this. But if I get to understand what my students are saying and why they're saying it, you know what, they're going to be more motivated to learn.

[11:35] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And to me, this is really at the heart of instructional leadership because I believe, and this perspective comes through in a lot of my different work with principals, that instructional leadership is not primarily about just providing feedback and suggestions to teachers to help them improve, but that it's about decision-making that results in improved learning, even if those decisions are operational in nature, even if they are... about the schedule, even if they're about something that doesn't seem like it's right at the heart of teaching and learning, even if it's not a curriculum issue. I think the decisions that we make as instructional leaders are hugely consequential for students.

[12:15]

And I've been saying for years that the best place to get that information to make those decisions is by being in classrooms. And I think to kind of take that to the next level, the best place to get information about what students are experiencing and what they need to experience is from students themselves. And certainly we can get that by being in classrooms, but often we don't hear much from students when we're in classrooms. We hear a lot from teachers. We see a lot of what teachers are up to, but we don't hear from students. They're sitting quietly, and we don't know what they're experiencing.

[12:49] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because we don't take the time to do it because we haven't seen the connection between what they say and what's making a difference. And I think about when I fly or when I stay at a hotel or going out to a place to eat, what do you get in your email box literally within 24 hours? Tell us about the flight. Yeah, tell us about the flight. Tell us about your meal. How was your stay at the Marriott?

[13:11]

Blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, wow, they're like surveying people like on steroids. Now, if you take that a little deeper and you look at students, but you don't look at them as clients like the airline does to us or hotel chains, but don't look at kids as clients, but look at them as partners. And when we look at them as partners, their voice becomes a lot louder because when a partner tells you you need improvement, you pay attention. When a client tells you you need improvement, yeah, well, we'll see what makes sense. But if we look at students as real partners, then their voice is going to be louder, it's going to be more purposeful, and it's going to be listened to with a great deal of interest.

[13:49] SPEAKER_01:

So if a school decides that they do want to tap into student voice, they do want to hear from their students, in practical terms, how do they roll that out? So you have a survey that you make available through Corwin that schools can obtain for their students. What does that process look like to put that into the hands of students and to get that feedback?

[14:10] SPEAKER_00:

Before I get into the logistics there, before the schools even go down that path, and this isn't like I'm trying not to sell surveys. I tell you they're important. But before I suggest to any schools going down the survey path, they need to take the time to prep both the students and the staff on why they're doing it. So I have a daughter that's a freshman in high school. And she comes back and says, oh, we did this survey, we did that survey. And they're just, they're mindless.

[14:35]

They don't even know why they're doing them. So what I tell schools that are involved and want to be involved in the student voice work, I said, be purposeful about it. Let students know why you're surveying them and what you're going to do with the data afterwards. Let teachers know the importance of this information and what you expect from them. Then when you get buy-in, then provide the survey because if you get the buy-in, they're going to take the survey way more seriously than is this another state thing or is this another regional thing or district thing we have to do. Now getting back to the logistics, Corwin, to their credit, and I really do admire them for this, They have made this about as seamless as it can possibly be, where students get online from any mobile device, take the survey, submit their responses, and in real time, the survey results are reported back to whether it's the school administrator, whether it's the contact person at the school or not.

[15:28]

The other cool thing about when they get the data back from this instrument, unlike many others, well, obviously the real-time thing is a major difference. But the second difference is we give them the raw data so they can cross-tab their own things. They might want to look at gender breakdowns, gender by grade level, grade level breakdowns. They might say, well, here are the kids that participate in sports. What does their data look like compared to kids that don't participate in sports? I mean, and so on and so forth.

[15:55]

I think the other piece that we added this year to the instrument, and this is coming from my staff, actually, because all of us are former administrators and teachers at some level. they suggested that we allow schools to add three statements of their own. So it's not this canned instrument, but it's an instrument that has got some wiggle room in there where schools can add their own questions if they're specifically addressing an issue. Once they get the surveys back, and again, that's in real time, they can decide what they're going to do with the work. But what we suggest, as I mentioned earlier, is that the staff look at the survey data, share it with the students, and they start to have conversations. And you do that with focus groups and so on.

[16:33]

What we have done this year that we haven't done before is develop a workshop around data. It's called Voice and Vision. It's basically taking what have you learned from the survey and how does it fit within the vision of the school and then develop action plans.

[16:47] SPEAKER_01:

So I think one issue that a lot of administrators in particular probably feel in advance of doing something like this is, Is this hesitation or this concern that we're going to make these grand promises to students that we want to hear from you, we want to hear your voice, we want to learn from you, we want to do better as a school as a result. If we are going to frame it for students so that they understand that it's important, how do we do that in a way that doesn't oversell or kind of overpromise students? You know, kind of student council style. You know, we'll have pizza every day if I'm elected. You know, if we give this survey, things will be different. And we don't know ahead of time what students are going to say.

[17:26]

So we don't know how things might need to be different. So we don't necessarily know how to set that up. What do you recommend that administrators do to kind of set the right expectations without overselling it, without overpromising, and without being afraid of where this is going to go?

[17:42] SPEAKER_00:

Right. Well, Justin, my friend, you nailed the issue right on its head. And so when we're asking the teachers, the administration to prep the kids, they need to understand what having a voice really means. Having a voice does not mean getting their way. That's called getting your way. We tell the students that what we're doing is we're trying to get a better understanding of what matters to the students.

[18:10]

We want to listen to them. We want to learn from what they're saying. And then we want to lead together. Now, that is very different from a suggestion box where I'm putting in a suggestion and if something doesn't happen, what do we say? They don't care what I think. Now, what we try to tell the students, we do this the same for teacher voice, which I know is somewhere else on the road we can talk about.

[18:32]

But what we make it very clear is that the process of voice is about being able to listen to others, learning from what they're saying, and then leading together. So it's seeking out opinions. That's what I'm doing as a teacher to ask my students what they think. I then take that data and I begin to understand it. I try to learn from it. And then once I understand and learn from that, then I can take some action.

[18:57]

What it does, that process for the students, it builds trust and respect. It starts to share responsibility. And those are the things we need to make very clear to the students that we survey. We need to make it very clear when we do the teacher voice survey is to say that this is not an instrument for you to get your way. This is an instrument for you to share what we need to know. This is an opportunity for you to take more responsibility in this school.

[19:24] SPEAKER_01:

So Russ, I wonder if you could kind of compare and contrast this work in high schools of bringing in students as leaders, as part of our decision making and part of our leadership. with what we've seen play out on college campuses recently where there's kind of an adversarial relationship between maybe students who are making demands and administrators who are being kind of stubborn or maybe having to resign. And we've seen a lot of controversies like that in the past couple of years. And it seems like there's the potential, especially in the K-12 setting, to do better. And I wonder if you could talk to us about that for a moment.

[20:01] SPEAKER_00:

When it comes into what's happening in colleges now, it's similar to what I've seen happening in high schools, quite frankly. They're not necessarily sit-ins or protests, but they're protests in different ways where they're not being engaged in their learning. To me, that's a protest of no one thinks what I say matters. I don't see a connection between what I'm learning and my present life. Now, they're not out there holding signs or holding people hostage by any stretch of the imagination, but they are protesting by their actions, and their actions, seemingly, are being bored in school, not engaged. The way to combat that, I think, and I don't know about higher ed, but I certainly know enough about the K-12 world, is this.

[20:47]

We need to help students understand, and the same with teachers, is that one, I'm going to ask your opinion. The second thing is, though, other than your opinion, I want to know what needs to be done. So saying like, this is a horrible class. Okay, whatever. Or I'm bored in school. Half the kids in this country say they're bored in school.

[21:07]

Okay, I'll take that for what it means. The next question there is what needs to change to not make it boring? You need to give me some suggestions. That's number two. But here's the third component that I think takes the student voice work to another level is once you tell me your opinion about what's wrong, Once you tell me what you think needs to be done to get fixed. The third piece is, what are you, meaning the student, what are you going to do about it?

[21:33]

And it shifts the burden of improvement away from the teachers and away from the educators and puts it, quite frankly, squarely on the shoulders of the students. What are we doing to give kids more responsibility? We're not giving students more responsibility by asking their opinion more often. We're giving them more responsibility by asking them to take a leadership role in improving the issues that they've identified. And to me, that's the difference.

[21:59] SPEAKER_01:

So, Russ, I'm thinking that as schools consider doing a survey of this type with their students, it's important for administrators especially to understand the whole framework. And I really appreciate the book that you've published, Student Voice, the Instrument of Change. And if you're listening to this, you can also find an interview with that Russ and I did about that book in our Principal Center app or on our website under principalcenter.com slash radio. Student Voice, the Instrument of Change is the book that you wrote with Michael Corso. And I wonder what other resources you might recommend that people kind of start with to understand and frame this issue for themselves as they begin their research and then consider doing a student survey.

[22:41] SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Well, first, Justin, I want to tell you that that Student Voice book has become a bestseller. And I'm pretty sure it's because of your radio station. um so thank you for other additional resources you can go right to our website it's qualia institute all one word dot org and on that site we have a button there that says library and under there we have lots and lots of resources that talk about the work it's got tech reports in there it's got the national data report for both students and teachers There is also a link on there to Corwin and to the Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center if people are interested in that. But I think the first step would go right to the qualityinstitute.org website because there's lots of good free resources in there and that people should take advantage of for us, quite frankly.

[23:29]

It's about sharing information. It's not about hoarding information. It's about sharing information, hearing what people think so that we, too, can listen, learn, and then lead even better. We absolutely try to practice what we preach. So I thank you for the opportunity to share those things.

[23:45] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you for your research and for your advocacy for these important topics. I always enjoy speaking with you. And I want to thank you for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. Thank you.

[23:57] SPEAKER_02:

And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership.

[24:01] SPEAKER_01:

So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Dr. Qualia? One of the things that I think matters the most in Dr. Qualia's work on student voice and also on teacher voice is the idea of information. And it's not something that he emphasizes directly, but I think as instructional leaders, one of our most important responsibilities is is making decisions. Now, as we talked about, it's not always that we're making those decisions by ourselves.

[24:28]

We're making them in collaboration with other people, with our staff, with our students. We're leading together. But often, it's our job to bring the information to the table. Often, we have the most information because of our position as administrators. And it's our job not to just bring the information we have to those decisions. It's our job to seek out the information that we need.

[24:50]

So I wanna challenge you to do two specific things as an instructional leader. First, I wanna challenge you to get into classrooms every single day. And when you're in classrooms, pay attention not just to the teaching techniques that are being used, not just to the instructional strategies, but pay attention to the student experience and the teacher experience. Because a lot of the decisions that you make over the long term, whether they're operational decisions, purchasing decisions, curriculum decisions, professional development decisions, All of those will be better decisions if you make them with student voice in mind, with teacher voice in mind, and with firsthand knowledge of the day-to-day experience that your staff and your students are having in your school. So I wanna encourage you to check out Dr. Qualia's books.

[25:35]

He's got quite a few on teacher voice and student voice, and you can find links on our website. And I wanna encourage you to get into classrooms every single day. And if you're not already in the habit of doing that, I have a very simple and clear model for that that you can find at instructionalleadershipchallenge.com.

[25:53] Announcer:

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