Study 1: The malleability of school climate: Lessons from the 5Essentials Survey in Chicago Public Schools
- How much change do we see in the 5Essentials Survey over time?
- Do factors such as school size, enrollment stability, and poverty affect the rate of improvement?
- Is there an order to organizational change (i.e., which aspect of school climate should come first)?
Study 2: How well do school survey reports represent all students? Looking beyond school averages
- How well do school averages represent the range of students’ experiences in a school?
- How different are the ratings of student groups from their school averages?
The 5Essentials Survey has been administered in CPS since the 1990s and measures a school’s strength in five essential organizational conditions that influence student learning: Effective Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Involved Families, Supportive Environment, and Ambitious Instruction.
Students’ and teachers’ reports on surveys about their experiences of their school and classroom environments continue to be key drivers of students’ attendance and learning.
These survey data are highly predictive: strong scores and growth in measure scores on the 5Essentials Survey are both predictive of many student success measures, including GPA, attendance, test scores, and college enrollment.
That means that 5Essentials Surveys provide one of the most promising sources of data and insights that schools can use to continuously improve students’ experiences, attendance, learning, and well-being. This is true across elementary and high schools serving students with different backgrounds and from families of different socioeconomic circumstances.
For school leaders, the abundance of information provided by school climate surveys can make the task of translating data into changes in practice seem challenging. Many practitioners are aware of the importance of a school’s climate and culture for student learning. What many want to know is can it be changed? Can any school improve its learning environment?
This research examines the extent to which school climate is responsive to improvement efforts, interrelationships among all five essentials, and how likely the essentials are to improve. It also looks at the extent to which school averages represent the range of student experiences in a school and how different responses from groups of students are from the average.
Key findings:
Study 1: The malleability of school climate: Lessons from the 5Essentials Survey in Chicago Public Schools
- School climate is malleable.
- Schools have a lot of influence over the culture and climate each year—small and large shifts in climate and culture can happen year-to-year, and they matter.
- All schools can grow. There is no consistent relationship between factors such as school size, enrollment, or poverty level, and growth on the essentials.
- Improvement in any essential has a positive impact on student success.
- The best area for focus is one that the school community has interest in, need for, and/or buy-in from staff and the broader school community. These drive the efforts that fuel improvement.
- If your school needs a place to start, consider focusing on the Supportive Environment essential. When Supportive Environment improves, the other essential supports often improve.
Study 2: How well do school survey reports represent all students? Looking beyond school averages
- School 5Essentials scores offer a useful summary of students' experiences; yet, within any given school, there may be meaningful differences in experiences across students with different backgrounds or circumstance.
- Leaders can apply a targeted universalist approach to look for and consider areas where particular student groups share less positive reports as signals to respond to with empathy, curiosity, and support.
- Individual students can vary widely in their experiences within the same school.
- There are likely to be some students who feel positively, even if others do not. Therefore, it is important to look at the differences across students in their survey responses and not just look at the average.
Resources for school leaders and teams:
- Summary of findings: 1-page overview and usable slides deck
- Quick guide: 5Essentials Quick Guide for Local School Councils (LSCs)
- How to access the Dashboard Summary
- What questions are helpful to ask to understand the data, and what context is helpful to consider
- How to find survey response rates, trends over time, and different student groups’ responses
Hear from Consortium and UChicago Impact staff, a veteran Chicago Public Schools (CPS) principal, and CPS data staff on how principals can make sense of their 5Essentials Survey data and use it to strengthen school improvement planning:
