Unlocking Parent Feedback: Best Practices for School Feedback Forms

Online forms are one of the best tried-and-true ways to gather feedback quickly. Some top reasons to collect feedback digitally are flexibility and anonymity.

One way to foster a positive school climate is by giving parents ample opportunities to provide feedback. However, giving feedback is not always as easy as it may seem. A school may state that parents can just email their input, but this may feel confrontational or vague for many parents. Additionally, emailing or texting does not provide a layer of structural procedure like filling out an online form. Parents may wonder if they give too little or too much feedback and whether it is even wanted.

Why Choose an Online Form Format for Parent Feedback?

Edit and Version Forms Fast

An online form system should make form edits and versioning quick and easy. School Signals online forms system is designed with flexible form editing and versioning by admins. You can add new questions to your feedback form and revise existing questions by versioning the form. You can overwrite an existing form for simple edits that don’t intercept with the analytics.

Use Forms from the Template Library

A solid online form platform provides form templates that make form onboarding close to effortless. With School Signals, admins can access a forms template library with commonly used feedback forms. These forms can be used as-is or edited for the school’s needs. You can also include your templates and share them with your school communication team.

Utilize Audience-based Settings to Target the Parents You Want to Reach

An online form may ask questions differently based on the audience. The beauty of the School Signals online forms system is that it integrates with user accounts in the system based on the student’s grade level and classroom teacher. The publishing system guides the admin in choosing the audience and visibility of the form, from school-wide to a single grade level, classroom, a group, volunteering opportunity -or even an event.

Create Rules How Forms Can Be Filled

I still remember the awful feeling of giving school feedback as a parent during COVID-19 times. I had clicked the form’s Save button, not realizing that the Save button on the final page of the form was synonymous with Submit. I was unable to go back to edit my submission. Even worse, I could not see how I had filled out the form, so I couldn’t reliably tell the administrators where I had made the mistake. That’s it, my submission just got sucked out, and it was gone.

With these common instances in mind, stemming from poorly designed UX of a form to innocent parent mistakes, School Signals addresses common usability issues with its online form system.

In the School Signals Online Forms system, admins can grant parents the right to go back and edit their responses. Editing may be needed when a parent wants to add more thoughts or clarifications to their feedback.

Or, if you are gathering numeric data, you may want to limit the input strictly to one form filling per parent. You can set these restrictions in the settings as well. Even if you choose to disallow parents to go back and edit their responses, the system creates a record for parents so that they can track their answers.

Utilize the Anonymous Filling Rule

There are cases when allowing anonymity in the submission is beneficial for accessing all opinions and viewpoints. Especially if you are polling or gathering honest parent feedback regarding the school climate, you want the anonymity setting turned on. In School Signals, you can choose the form’s privacy setting between linking to a user account and anonymous submission.

But before publishing and sharing your form with your school community, how should you go about designing an optimal parent feedback form for your school?

Explore the Pros and Cons of Quantitative and Qualitative Questions

Quantitative data expresses opinions and viewpoints in numbers. Providing feedback is fast for a parent when they can choose a radio button, checkbox, or a predefined value in a scale. Qualitative questions on the other hand allow the subject to share their thoughts and opinions in their own words.

Make Numeric Values Clear to Understand

The downside of quantitive scales is that numeric data can be misunderstood. If I ask you to rate something on a scale of 1 to 100, do you take one as the best option and 100 as the least best, or vice versa? Explaining the meaning of numbers can prevent misunderstandings. Additionally, using a more manageable Likert scale (1 – 5) may be easier to understand.

Consider That Parents May Fill Forms in a Culturally Normative Way

It is also important to note that how a parent gives praise or criticism may vary culturally. Some parents may feel that as committed members of a tight-knit school community, they are assumed to provide high praise or a high value on a Likert scale as part of the social norm. It may have become a cultural norm for some parents to leave “5-star reviews” as social media posts repeatedly ask for these reviews pleadingly, and anything less may be considered even a strong criticism of the business or institution. On the other hand, some parents may give high praise only in exceptional circumstances.

An approach to bridge some limitations of quantitative feedback is to ask open-ended questions that gently encourage parents to elaborate their thinking and input in more detail. Let’s explore these question types next.

Prepare Your Qualitative Questions Carefully

Recently, my son was assigned to write a book report. The assignment ended with a request to write about “why other readers might also enjoy the book.” In my son’s case, he did not enjoy the story much, but the book report assignment was written with a bias that expected him to enjoy the book. While he crafted his words around this bias, this is not how to request information that values various opinions and viewpoints.

Craft Open-Ended Questions

During my sociology studies, a significant point we would get is to never ask your research questions directly from the subject you are interviewing. We were to study emerging discourses, themes, and patterns stemming from the subject interviews. In the context of school, asking open-ended questions allows parents to elaborate and helps school administrators see what topics are repeated or “trending.”

Provide Opportunities to Elaborate

Why not simply request parents share their thoughts about the school in their own words? Some parents may have a pattern of not wanting to write too much per question, so repeating the request in a few differently phrased questions may result in more collaboration and valuable insight.

Strike the Balance Between Gathering Quantitative and Qualitative Data

A Hanover Research Center recommends no more than one or two open-ended questions per school climate survey to avoid survey fatigue. This seems quite a low number, but it is understandable when the survey includes many quantitative questions. Another way to overcome fatigue is to make open-ended questions optional. Additionally, feedback forms that are optional and available year-round, the forms that parents want to fill, are likely better suited for a higher number of qualitative questions.

Use School Signals Template Forms

You can find school feedback forms from the School Signals template forms library that are crafted with this balance in mind. This mixed-method approach allows you to more authentically draw a picture of your school community.

The Takeaway

By mixing quantitative and qualitative questions in the school feedback forms, you can communicate to parents that you respect their time and valuable input while encouraging them to elaborate and share their thoughts.

Letting parents go back and edit their answers provides an added opportunity to receive missed information. Allowing anonymous filling will enable parents to express themselves openly, without the concern of social consequences of breaking out from any expected answers.

For vast school climate surveys, it may be optimal to contract with university-based school climate survey organizations such as the Alliance for the Study of School Climate (ASSC) to access their copyrighted questions and proven survey methods. They will also act as a third-party navigator around this sensitive subject.

School Signals online forms are a great way to collect year-round parent feedback. Open-ended questions provide this opportunity for parents who wish to elaborate on topics in detail. Consider creating multiple forms to catch both quick feedback and more extensive insight.