I was feeling energetic.
The 2021-22 school year is the first year in this longitudinal dataset because that was the first full year after we completely revamped our surveys based on that latest and greatest school engagement and satisfaction research. We’ve now got five years of it sitting in o
ne spreadsheet. So instead of asking, “What changed since last year?” we asked the bigger question, “What changed over the last five years?”
The answer depends entirely on who you ask. And that's the story.
Staff
Twenty-nine of thirty staff questions are better today than they were in 2021-22. One is basically flat. Zero declined in any meaningful way.
If that sounds familiar, it should. We’ve written before about how rough staff data looked coming out of the pandemic years and how it bounced back. What the five-year view adds is the shape of that recovery: 2022-23 was a strong rebound, 2023-24 was a gut-punch (every single staff item dropped that year, which we don't see very often), and then 2024-25 brought staff right back, followed by another small step forward this year.
The net result is that staff would recommend their district as a place to work a half-point higher than they did five years ago. They think their district’s pay practices are fairer. They think parents and the community support the school district more.
Students
Twenty-two of twenty-five student questions improved. No single year of whiplash like staff experienced. Instead, a slow, consistent climb.
The biggest mover is one we’d definitely want to see move: “If I were bullied, I would feel comfortable talking to someone about it” is up over a quarter-point. That’s not a number that shifts because of a new poster in the hallway. That’s trust, built over years, in the adults around a kid.
The one item working against the grain is “I can go online or use a device at school when I need it” is down noticeably, and it’s the largest decline anywhere in the student data. That might actually be the point. We’d bet that's the cell phone and device policy tightening we've talked about all year showing up in the numbers. Worth watching as more states (Wisconsin included) finalize their bans.
Parents
Here’s where the story gets less tidy. Nineteen of twenty-six parent items improved, so on paper, that’s certainly a winning record. But look closer and the wins are thin. A flagship question like “I’m satisfied with how much my child is learning” haven’t moved at all in five years. “Most days, my child enjoys going to school” is actually down. So is “How likely would you be to recommend our school(s) to a friend or family member?”
Parents aren’t souring, but they’re not nearly as moved as staff and students by whatever’s improved over the last five years. That gap matters because parents are the audience standing closest to the building without actually being in it every day.
Community
There aren’t as many standard community survey items because those are very customized surveys. That said, there are a few regularly used overall satisfaction questions included in each. Unfortunately, all community item declined over five years. Pride in the community, confidence in fund management, how informed people feel, the quality if the education students receive – all down. The biggie (willingness to recommend the schools to a friend or family member) dropped four-tenths of a point, by far the largest single movement, in either direction, anywhere in this dataset.
So what's actually going on here?
Line all four groups up next to each other and a pattern emerges—a patterns we that’s not totally unexpected: the closer you are to the building, the better things look.
Staff, who are there every day, feel great. Students, who are there every day, feel pretty good too. Parents, who are there occasionally, feel about the same as they did five years ago. Community members, who mostly aren’t there at all, feel worse.
This could be a communication problem. Your staff and students know what’s going on at school because, as we just said, they’re there every day. The people most informed are also the happiest, which begs the question, if more people knew what was going on at school, would their satisfaction increase as well?
We talk to a lot of districts about their communication strategy, and this is exactly the kind of finding that should change how you think about it. If your internal numbers are climbing and your community numbers are sinking, more newsletters alone won’t fix that gap (especially if they’re online). You need the right audience hearing the right things on a rhythm they'll actually notice.
Looking at this data one year at a time means you’ll miss the slow-motion version of the story. Sometimes the most useful comparison isn’t this year versus last year. It’s this year versus the year you started paying attention.
The School Perceptions Resource Center features the voices of our team members. This post was written by Rob DeMeuse, Vice President of Research.