By Zhiyuan Ma, Staff Writer
As most students know, Mills sometimes sends out a Panorama survey for students, parents, and staff to complete. However, what is unclear is what happens to the responses. Do they have any impact? Does the school even look at the responses? Those questions will be answered, but first, let’s look at how a survey is made.
The school district determines when to send out a survey and what the focus will be. For instance, the focus of the survey sent out this semester was back to school and therefore filled with general questions asking if they felt connected to other students and teachers. People from the school district and Mills collaborate to decide which questions to include. The receiving window is determined and the surveys are published.
After receiving the responses, the school makes sure that there are enough so that the results accurately reflect the population. In the last survey, there were 1,019 student responses and 221 parent responses. The number of parent responses was “less than what we would hope,” Assistant Principal Schlax said, “but we understand very much that there are a lot of surveys and emails that get sent out. It’s not always easy to pick out what are the things that are really important…But 221 responses give us enough information to be able to notice some trends.” Panorama validates the data and creates a report which includes the percentages of favorable percentages and areas for growth. The report is then reviewed by multiple groups, including the administration team, tier one team, site leaders, the principal, the academic senate (which consists of all the department heads), and faculty meetings.
When asked about the impact of the responses, Assistant Principal Schlax replied “If all the responses say ‘You’re doing great! Everything’s perfect! Keep it up!’, then you probably wouldn’t feel much impact. But sometimes the responses can have an incredible amount of impact.” In the 2020 fall survey, many students said that they experienced enormous amounts of stress. After receiving the data, the school tried to figure out how to alleviate some of the pressure. AP Schlax said, “What we have seen is a change in the bell schedule so that students don’t have their classes quite so often, meaning there is more time to get homework done. And we are seeing teachers assigning less homework and instead having the homework be completion of work that they have started during class or continue work on a project where students can demonstrate mastery.” Only 20 percent of students felt “quite connected” or “extremely connected” according to another survey last year. The administration and the tier one team attacked this issue by encouraging check-in questions and educating teachers on ways to facilitate bonding between them and their students. In this school year’s survey, 93 percent of students said that their teachers gave them assignments that helped them understand the subjects. While not the exact same question, AP Schlax claimed that a student wouldn’t feel connected to the teacher if the teacher didn’t help the student learn. “And yes, some of that is about the fact that we are all back together because being together in community matters. But some of it is about the fact that we have been pushing and working and trying so hard to figure out how do we help students and teachers connect with each other and how do we help students connect with each other and feel like they belong.”
The creation of the Youth Catalyst Liberatory Workshop, a discussion group where students tackle racism at Mills, was in part due to the results of another one of the Panorama surveys. The focus of one of the surveys last fall was identity and whether students feel safe in their identity at school. 61 percent of students have experienced “casual racism” and 19 percent of students have been “the victim of hate-motivated speech or behavior.”
A more recent concern is that 27 percent of students responded to one of the questions on this school year’s survey that in the last six months, they have felt so dejected for two weeks or more that they stopped doing their usual activities. This is one of the major signs of depression. AP Schlax said, “That is a big deal and it is not something we are going to ignore.”
Even though many students are depressed, we are confident that the school will do something to solve this problem. Thank you, Panorama surveys, for illuminating this problem!
