Dallas Independent School District campus employees are more confident in the direction of the district than they have been in the last four years, according to the most recent survey.
On the Fall 2016 Campus Climate Survey, more than 73 percent of school staff said they believe the district is headed in the right direction. The response marks a more than 10 percentage point increase and is the highest since 2013.
Also, confidence in their campus direction is up with 77.9 percent responding positively, up from 73 percent in 2015.
“This year, there have been a number of gains made in student achievement,” Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said. “I am pleased to know campus staff members support these improvements, as they are the cornerstone of the work being done here, and it’s important to have their buy in as the district moves forward. The results are reassuring, but there’s work to be done.”
The results are compiled from the 15,034 campus-based employees who took the school staff survey this fall. The survey is designed to gather feedback from teachers and school administrators on how they view the climate in the schools and district. The results are also a contributing factor in campus principals’ performance evaluations.
For the first time in the survey, Dallas ISD sought employee feedback regarding how the student achievement goals, as identified by the Board of Trustees, guide day-to-day actions at their campus.
Nearly 77 percent of respondents believe the first student achievement goal guides their day-to-day actions at their school. Goal 1 states that all students will exhibit satisfactory or above performance on state assessments, and believe students below satisfactory performance will demonstrate more than one year of academic growth.
School morale also improved from 57.4 percent the previous year to 63.9 percent in 2016, which is an increase of 6.5 percentage points.
The district has administered the climate survey in the fall and spring semesters for the past five years. The survey, which is administered and analyzed by Hanover Research Company, is completely voluntary and anonymous.
