What School Attributes Make Parents More Likely to Recommend Your School?

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

Benchmarking for Good’s market research among over 1,200 faith based day school parents reveals the factors that have the highest correlation with parents’ willingness to recommend enrollment at their kids’ school to friends and family. There are some big surprises in the list, because of what is not there: high academic quality. Instead, the top factors are the softer, environmental factors that often get less attention.

THE LIST IN RANKED ORDER (CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS*)

1. Provides Strong Religious Guidance to Enhance Students' Growth (r = 0.560)

2. Responsive to My Communications (r = 0.547)

3. Provides Effective Role Models (r = 0.523)

4. Welcoming Environment for Our Entire Family (r = 0.521)

5. Positive and Nurturing Environment for Students (r = 0.516)

6. Focuses on Teaching Good Values and Building Character (r = 0.515)

7. Positive Relationship between Administration and Students (r = 0.498)

8. Promotes My Family's Desired Religious Development (r = 0.494)

9. Provides Effective Mental Health Guidance (r = 0.471)

10. Proactive in Communication about My Child's Situation (r = 0.461)

*Correlation coefficients between 0.50-0.70 are considered strong correlations in social science research. The top 6 attributes in our analysis fall in this range, with "Provides Strong Religious Guidance" leading at 0.560.

Key Insights that emerge from this analysis:

1. Religious and values-oriented aspects of education show the strongest correlation, with parent satisfaction and likelihood to recommend (3 of the top 8 factors).

2. School-family communication is extremely important, with both "Responsive to Communications" and "Proactive Communication" in the top 10.

3. School environment factors like "Welcoming Environment," "Positive and Nurturing Environment," and "Positive Relationships Between Administration and Students" are strongly associated with parent recommendations.

4. Interestingly, traditional academic measures like "Academic Excellence in General Studies" (r = 0.385) and "Mathematics" (r = 0.277) show moderate to weaker correlations compared to environmental, religious, and communication factors.

5. The lowest correlations are with facilities and extracurricular activities like "Physical Education" (r = 0.189) and "Visual and Performing Arts" (r = 0.216).

The data suggests that day school parents value the school's ability to provide religious guidance, effective communication, and a positive environment more strongly than specific academic achievements when considering whether to recommend the school to others.

To discuss these findings and how your institution can participate in future Benchmarking for Good grant programs to increase the positivity of your parents about your school please contact Dr. Harry Bloom at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org

# Enrollment   #Day schools    #Parents   #Schools

What School Attributes Increase Student Propensity to Recommend Their School to Peers?

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

Having conducted hundreds of interviews with parents of high school students as well as scores of focus groups with students it is clear that students are playing a major role in selecting their high school. It is further clear that they rely heavily on word of mouth recommendations from older students to shape their preferences. 

This raises an important question: How can high school administrators increase the odds that their students will want to recommend their school?

Research on Drivers of Student Advocacy

Benchmarking for Good research with over 1400 high school students conducted over the past 4 months. Statistical analysis of survey results indicate that strong student ratings on the following 5 factors correlated most strongly with the propensity of students to strongly recommend their schools to friends:

• Offering a Positive and Nurturing Environment for Students

• Providing a Strong Social Community for Students to Belong To

• Proactively Communicating About Students’ Situation and Priorities

• Offering Strong Guidance Programs to Recommend Appropriate High Schools, Yeshivot/Seminaries,  or Colleges

• Teachers Paying Attention to Students’ Individual Learning Needs.

Implications for High School Administrators

1. It is vitally important for administrators to conduct student research to learn how their school’s performance is perceived on these key factors.

2. If scores in a particular attribute are lower than desired, administrators should acknowledge the results and declare an intention to strengthen school performance in the area in question.

3. As a next step, administrators should convene focus groups with groups of trusted students to gain an understanding of what changes might strengthen their schools’ performance and fit school cultural norms.

4. Plans to implement changes should be announced and short pulse surveys utilized to ensure the changes are perceived and achieving the desired results.

5. School leaders should announce and celebrate wins and thereby engender in students the perception that their views are respected. This will pave the way for continuous improvement fueled by research. 

School leaders interested in gaining access to helpful action research in this key arena should contact Dr. Harry Bloom at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to explore the potential for their participation in future Benchmarking for Good grant programs.

#Jewish day schools #High Schools #Student Ambassadors #School Marketing

Imperative: Strengthening the Supervision Skills of Faculty Administrators

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

Benchmarking for Good has been researching the state of faculty climate for the past year. Our research contributers include 23 Jewish day schools with nearly 1200 faculty members. 

A key topic our research explored is the extent to which faculty members believe the supervision they receive enhances their professional skills. The data suggest there is ample room for improvement. In fact, only 43% of faculty are very satisfied that the feedback provided by their work superior makes them grow professionally. Nearly 30% are either unsatisfied or aren’t sure one way or the other.

Drilling down among the schools in our sample and using the Net Promoter Score metric, which nets out the scores of faculty members who are unsatisfied from those who are very satisfied, we learn that there are significant differences in performance on this measure among day schools.

Question to Readers: where does your school's performance fit on this chart on this issue?

What this Information Means for the Field

Schools in the top ⅓ of performers include Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston, New Jersey and the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Hartford. These schools recognize that it is vital to take steps to ensure supervisors have the skills to instill a growth mindset among their faculty members. These school leaders recognize the fact that it is unwise to assume that assuming that experienced faculty members will automatically become capable supervisors is a "bridge too far." They recognize that training supervisors on how to supervise effectively is the most powerful type of professional development a school can invest in. 

To Learn More

To learn more about how to evaluate the effectiveness of your school’s supervision, I invite you to contact me at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org. We can also have a discussion about how your school can take advantage of Benchmarking for Good’s school research grant programs to enhance school effectiveness and climate.