The School Enjoyment Factor

How Perceived Student Enjoyment Drives Parent Advocacy in Jewish Day Schools

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

At Benchmarking for Good, we spend a lot of time studying what drives parents to become advocates for their child’s school. Schools invest heavily in academic programs, facilities, and marketing — but our latest parent survey data points to something far more elemental: whether parents believe their child actually enjoys going to school.

The finding isn’t just directionally interesting. It’s statistically overwhelming, and it carries practical implications that school leaders should take seriously.

The Core Finding: A 132-Point Net Promoter Score Swing

We asked parents two simple questions: “To what extent do you think that your child enjoys going to our school?” and “How likely are you to recommend our school to other Jewish families you know?” The relationship between those two answers, across 1,558 valid responses, is striking.

1. Parents who perceive their child enjoying school “a tremendous amount” produce a Net Promoter Score of +84.5 — a score most organizations would envy. Nearly nine out of ten of these parents (87.5%) are promoters who would actively recommend the school.

2. At the other end, parents who believe their child does not enjoy school at all yield an NPS of −47.6. Fewer than one in ten (9.5%) would recommend the school, while more than half (57.1%) are detractors.

That’s a swing of 132 NPS points from one end of the enjoyment spectrum to the other.

The statistical backbone is solid. The Spearman rank correlation between the two measures is ρ = 0.460 (p < 0.001), and a chi-square test of independence confirms the association is highly significant (χ² = 472.5, df = 16, p < 0.001).

Table 1: NPS by Perceived Child Enjoyment Level

Enjoyment Level	NPS	Promoters	Passives	Detractors
A tremendous amount	+84.5	87.5%	9.5%	3.0%
Quite a bit	+54.8	63.3%	28.1%	8.6%
Somewhat	+9.8	36.5%	36.9%	26.6%
Unsure	+7.0	39.5%	27.9%	32.6%
Not at all	−47.6	9.5%	33.3%	57.1%

n = 1,558 valid paired responses. Promoters = “Very Likely.” Detractors = “Very Unlikely” + “Somewhat Unlikely” + “Neither.”

The Inflection Point: “Quite a Bit” Is the Threshold That Matters

Not all steps on the enjoyment ladder are equal. The data reveals a clear inflection point between “Somewhat” and “Quite a bit” — and it’s where schools should focus their attention.

Parents who rate their child’s enjoyment as “Somewhat” produce an NPS of just +9.8. Only 36.5% are promoters. Move one notch up to “Quite a bit,” and NPS more than quintuples to +54.8, with 63.3% becoming promoters. That single step — from lukewarm enjoyment to genuine engagement — is where the economics of parent advocacy shift dramatically.

Below the threshold, the picture is bleak. “Unsure” parents yield an NPS of +7.0, and “Not at all” parents sink to −47.6. Above it, the gains continue — “tremendous” enjoyment pushes NPS to +84.5 — but the largest marginal return comes from crossing that “Somewhat” to “Quite a bit” divide.

The implication for school leaders is clear: moving families out of the “Somewhat” bucket should be a strategic priority. These aren’t disengaged families — they haven’t left, and they haven’t checked out. They’re sitting on the fence, and the data says a relatively modest improvement in perceived enjoyment could convert them from passive observers into active promoters.

It’s Not the Same Across Divisions

When we segment the data by school division, the overall pattern holds everywhere — but the strength of the relationship, and the size of the opportunity, differ meaningfully.

Table 2: Division Comparison Summary

Division	Overall NPS	Mean Enjoyment	% Tremendously	% ≤ Somewhat
Early Childhood	+67.0	4.44	58.1%	10.6%
Elementary / Lower	+61.6	4.30	51.0%	16.2%
Middle School	+62.5	4.19	44.1%	19.4%
High / Upper School	+57.8	4.08	43.8%	25.5%

*** p < 0.001. Parents responding for children in multiple divisions may appear in more than one segment. Fisher z-test: HS vs MS ρ difference is significant (p = 0.029).

High School: The Highest-Leverage Division

High School parents exhibit the strongest correlation between perceived enjoyment and recommendation propensity (ρ = 0.509, p < 0.001). They also report the lowest average enjoyment of any division (mean of 4.08 on a 5-point scale), and fully 25.5% rate their child’s enjoyment at “Somewhat” or below.

This combination — strongest link, lowest baseline — makes High School the division where enjoyment-focused interventions would yield the greatest return in parent advocacy. At the “Somewhat” level, HS parents produce an NPS of just +5.3. Push them to “Quite a bit,” and NPS surges to +66.4. That 61-point jump represents a massive untapped opportunity.

There’s an intuitive logic here. High school students are more articulate about their experience, more likely to share frustrations at the dinner table, and their parents are making consequential decisions about whether to stay, whether to recommend, and whether to invest in the next phase of education. When a high schooler visibly enjoys school, parents notice — and they talk about it.

Middle School: A Different Dynamic

Middle School shows the weakest enjoyment-recommendation correlation of any division (ρ = 0.392, p < 0.001). The relationship is still highly significant, but noticeably attenuated compared to the others.

This suggests that for Middle School parents, factors beyond enjoyment play a larger role in their recommendation calculus. Academic preparation for high school, social dynamics during a developmentally turbulent period, and the quality of guidance programming may matter more in this division than in others. Interestingly, Middle School parents who rate enjoyment as “Somewhat” still produce an NPS of +31.4 — far higher than the +5.3 seen at the same enjoyment level in High School. MS parents seem to give the school more credit even when enjoyment is moderate, perhaps because they understand that the middle school years are inherently more challenging.

The difference in correlation strength between High School and Middle School is statistically significant (Fisher z-test, p = 0.029), confirming this isn’t just noise.

Elementary School: The Pattern in Full

Elementary parents track the overall dataset closely, with the sharpest promoter cliff of any division. Among parents who rate enjoyment as “tremendous,” 90.9% are promoters. At “Somewhat,” that drops to 37.3%. Elementary is where the enjoyment-to-advocacy pipeline operates most cleanly — parents see a happy child, and they recommend the school. The mechanism is direct and powerful.

Early Childhood: Already Optimized

Early Childhood stands out for having the highest baseline enjoyment (mean 4.44, with 58.1% at “tremendous”) and the strongest overall NPS (+67.0). The correlation remains robust (ρ = 0.448, p < 0.001), but EC is essentially operating at the top of the curve. The strategic priority here is maintenance — ensuring that the high enjoyment levels EC parents report don’t erode as children age into older divisions.

The Age Gradient: Enjoyment Erodes Upward

One of the more sobering patterns in the data is the steady decline in perceived enjoyment as children move through the divisions. The share of parents reporting “tremendous” enjoyment drops from 58.1% in Early Childhood to 51.0% in Elementary, 44.1% in Middle School, and 43.8% in High School. Meanwhile, the share of parents rating enjoyment at “Somewhat” or below rises from 10.6% in EC to 25.5% in HS.

This isn’t necessarily a failure — older students face harder material, more complex social dynamics, and greater academic pressure. Some decline may be natural. But when combined with the finding that the enjoyment-recommendation link is strongest at the high school level, the erosion creates a compounding problem: enjoyment drops precisely where it matters most.

What This Means for School Leaders

These findings don’t suggest that schools should become amusement parks. Enjoyment, as perceived by parents, is likely a proxy for a constellation of experiences — a child who feels socially connected, intellectually stimulated, emotionally supported, and genuinely known by their teachers. The survey measures perceived enjoyment, not entertainment.

With that framing, several strategic implications emerge:

•       Track enjoyment as a leading indicator. Most schools track NPS or overall satisfaction. The data suggests that perceived child enjoyment is an upstream driver of both — a leading indicator that changes before recommendation propensity does. Monitoring enjoyment levels by division, and flagging shifts early, gives leadership a proactive tool rather than a reactive one.

•       Prioritize the “Somewhat” cohort. These families are at a tipping point. They haven’t left, and their children don’t hate school — but they’re not energized, either. Targeted outreach, check-ins, or adjustments to the student experience could move them into the “Quite a bit” category, where NPS more than quintuples.

•       K-12 schools should focus disproportionately on High School. The data is unambiguous: HS is where the enjoyment-recommendation link is strongest, where baseline enjoyment is lowest, and where the marginal return on improvement is greatest. Every dollar or hour invested in HS student experience has a higher expected return in parent advocacy than the same investment in other divisions.

•       Investigate the Middle School disconnect. If enjoyment is a weaker predictor of recommendation in MS, what’s filling the gap? Is it academic outcomes? Social belonging? The quality of guidance programming? Understanding what drives MS parent advocacy differently could unlock division-specific strategies.

•       Protect EC and Elementary baselines. These divisions are performing well, and the temptation might be to redirect attention to the divisions that need it most. But the age-related enjoyment erosion suggests that today’s happy early childhood families are tomorrow’s at-risk high school families. Ensuring continuity of the student experience across transitions is essential.

A Final Note on Correlation versus Causation

We should be honest about what this analysis can and cannot show. The correlation between perceived enjoyment and recommendation propensity is strong, consistent, and statistically robust — but it is correlational. We cannot prove that increasing enjoyment causes parents to recommend at higher rates. It’s possible, for example, that parents who are already inclined to recommend the school perceive their child’s enjoyment more generously, or that a third factor (like overall school quality) drives both.

That said, the strength of the relationship (ρ ≈ 0.46–0.51 across most divisions), its consistency across school levels, and the clear dose-response pattern (each step up in enjoyment maps to a meaningful NPS gain) all suggest that the causal arrow runs at least partly in the expected direction. And from a practical standpoint, whether enjoyment drives recommendation or both are reflections of the same underlying experience, investing in student enjoyment is unlikely to be wasted effort.

Benchmarking for Good Can Help Your School Gauge Student Happiness and Parent Perceptions Thereof

We offer proven student and parent surveys, peer school analysis and a willingness and ability to create tailored instruments to meet every school’s needs. Our survey analysis enables us to work with your school to craft a tailored improvement plan where needed. Contact harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to discuss a collaboration.