Evaluate Your School Culture and Take Positive Steps

A positive school culture significantly impacts teacher retention and student success. But how can we measure the school culture? How can we tell if a school lives up to its promise of the mission and vision statements?

Studies have shown that teachers are more likely to retain their jobs when working at a school with a positive and supportive culture.

Students who attend schools with positive school cultures are more likely to have higher academic achievement, be more engaged in activities, and have a positive attitude towards learning.

The role of parents is to support their children’s educational path. They should not just be able to communicate with teachers and the school about any of their concerns but also positively contribute with their personal experience and cultural knowledge towards building an enriching school culture.

Beliefs vs. Reality

Most school leaders believe in a positive school culture. However, sharing a school’s vision and mission statements alone does not make a positive culture.

An authentic culture of the school is defined by the values and beliefs put into practice, what the Fordham Institute calls shared habits of mind. These habits of mind are the dispositions of those who make up the school, their understanding, empathy, flexibility, and listening skills.

For example, a school’s mission may be fostering communication, and you might believe you have a school committed to listening to parents. However, during the school culture audit, you may find that your teachers need help communicating with parents. They may need more communication tools or support for effective community outreach.

Parents, on the other hand, may state that they do not feel heard or that they don’t have proper channels to give feedback. Parents may also express concerns about their child’s learning experience or they may be uncertain who to contact in specific matters regarding their child’s education.

During the school climate audit, to give another example, you may find out that the school’s mission may be hands-on learning, but those opportunities are rare. Perhaps it turns out that the teachers need the necessary materials to conduct hands-on learning experiences, or there needs to be a shared schedule to allocate time for these sessions. Parents may also need clarification on what hands-on learning should look like.

Evaluating the School Culture and Climate

Cultural values and preferences can impact all aspects of a school’s culture. Spending some time studying the current culture of the school can help to identify problems with the community to foster a positive change.

According to Johns Hopkins University, one of the first and most important steps a school leader or administrator can take when working to improve their overall school culture is to conduct an audit of school practices to ensure consistency between the school’s mission and its institutional practices, including:

curriculum implementation and scaffolding
teacher professional development
the use of discipline
grading policies
parent communication
community building

Forming a School Climate Team

Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, suggests concrete steps on evaluating school culture and climate (SCC). The foundation recommends forming a school climate team that comprises teachers from different grade levels who meet monthly to assess the climate.

Surveying students, parents, and staff is a starting point in the evaluation. Additionally, the school should evaluate all bullying and other incidents.

Only after identifying the issues and the current climate can the school develop a practical plan to address the school culture and take reasonable steps towards improvement through responsibility sharing and accountability.

Including the entire community (including the school board) in building efforts is essential. The SCC team should communicate all plans, actions, and the resulting data, emphasizing “why” the school will take the actions and what role each stakeholder plays in implementation. (See about the topic more here.)

Getting Organized with School Signals

School Signals works two-fold to help to improve the school culture. You can harness the system first to evaluate the culture and then help take concrete steps to improve the culture.

The core features of School Signals, such as School Feed, Online Forms, Private Surveys, and Groups, can be harnessed for a positive impact – to audit and evaluate the school culture in a particular school and then for practical steps towards a positive culture.

First, you can create a private committee in the school management software system/app to conduct the school culture and climate audit. Helpful tools such as meeting calendars and a private communication feed allow the committee to organize its work.

The committee may create fully customizable surveys in the system and invite parents, older students, the board, teachers, and the staff to take them.

You can use templates that help to create the survey questions faster. For instance, you can choose a template with questions regarding the school’s mission and vision statements to evaluate whether the parents think the school lives up to the promise of these statements.

Communicating and Living Up to the Plan

Once you have identified the areas needing improvement, it is time to form a plan and communicate it to the community. You and your communication and SCC teams can use the School Signals software and mobile app features to improve the School culture directly:

Make informative and inclusive posts to the School Feed.
Encourage parents to make posts and use their voice in the School Feed.
Encourage bullying and incident reporting.
Encourage teachers to foster an active Classroom presence with timely updates.
Share necessary documents regularly in Resources.
Make sure the school’s mission and vision statements are shared.
Share the curriculums.
Post meeting documents online.
Share pictures of positive learning experiences.
Share all resources and any third-party links in one area
Respect parents’ multiple ways of wanting to be reached.
Provide parents and teachers with straightforward ways to give feedback.
Share upcoming events with auto-reminders.
Use the survey feature to conduct follow-up surveys.
Increase parent participation with Volunteer Sign-up features.
Provide networking opportunities for parents and staff.

A set focus on diversity and inclusivity is an approach to school culture that builds communities. Letting the extended school community know that they are welcome, that you hear the community’s needs, and that the school strives to meet them is a sign of an inclusive school community. You can bring the community together with a commitment, a practical work plan, the right communication paths open, and a proper amount of automation to help.