Q: What does K12 Insight offer school districts?
A: K12 Insight brings order into an essential activity at all school districts: surveying. Whether it is a survey related to school improvement plan or a survey to track effectiveness of professional development activity, schools conduct a lot of surveys. K12 Insight provides technology and expertise to simplify and streamline all surveying, freeing up time for staff and administrators.
Q: What do you mean K12 Insight “brings order” to the way districts do surveys?
A: First, let us acknowledge that all districts conduct surveys. Many surveys are mandated by Dept of Education. Others are required by state and local mandates. Next, most administrators will admit that while there is a “testing calendar” and a calendar for virtually every important activity in the district, surveys are conducted without much forethought or planning. They are often done in ad-hoc fashion. An essential consequence of this is that it is hard to tell the extent of surveying and hence direct and indirect costs associated with surveying in the district. Then, there are issues with data quality, survey methodology and political risks in the form of a Public Relations issues resulting from poorly designed surveys. Most districts over-spend on their survey initiatives due to duplication of effort and over-surveying.
Q: So how does K12 Insight actually help districts bring order to surveying in the district?
A: K12 Insight has developed a plan in working with superintendents, assistant superintendents and department directors at over 100 districts around the country. The first thing we do when we come to a district is we conduct a “survey of surveys.” This helps us establish a baseline of survey activity in the district. This helps define the district’s survey needs and our expertise helps to develop a District Survey Calendar and a District Strategic Survey Plan (DSSP). The DSSP eliminates redundant survey activity, spreads the activity over the entire year, ensures data collected is relevant and useful and incorporates all the best practices on surveying at schools. The end results are to reduce staff workload thereby freeing up their time, ensure surveys are consistent and free of common errors thereby reducing risks for the district (there is potential for a PR fiasco if a community survey is conducted poorly), and better quality data and reports for all stakeholders so they can make better decisions in their areas of work.
Q: We do surveys via scanning software, is that how K12 Insight propose we do surveys?
A: The exact mode of a survey depends on a lot of factors. It might include paper, telephone or online depending on several factors. The good news is K12 Insight can help you adopt the most efficient path to surveying based on our experience with school surveys and the unique situation of your district.
Q: So, K12 Insight helps districts collect data using any format, how about reporting?
A: We provide district administrators with an online analytical technology that lets you analyze all the data you gathered– no matter how you collected it – using a sophisticated online reporting platform. These reports help you view aggregate reports, disaggregate data based on key demographic variables, serve graphs that can be directly imported into Microsoft Office applications and share the results effortlessly with all stakeholders in the district.
Q: Several members of our staff use an online survey tool. Is that what you do?
A: Chances are members of your staff use what we call first generation online survey tools. There are many such tools and most are useful to create Web forms for data collection. Despite the convenience of data collection, there is a significant amount of survey related work that your staff must do outside of those tools to complete their survey projects. The total cost of ownership becomes high when you account for the other tasks that your staff complete using other solutions. What you need is a comprehensive survey system for your district. K12 Insight’s solution incorporates the unique needs of school districts. For instance, you may access a survey library with tested and validated surveys on most issues that impact school districts. This library is regularly updated based on K12 Insight’s partnerships with a large number of state and national K12 organizations. Further, the focus is not just on data collection, but on reporting, analysis and developing Insight from data. There is an in-built collaboration modules that allows various stakeholders in the district to review data based on pre-assigned permissions. This brings all stakeholders on the same page helping develop consensus on important issues.
Q: You mentioned partners, who is K12 Insight partnered with?
A: A list of K12 Insight’s partners appears here.
Q: Would we be able to check references in some districts where K12 Insight’s solution is deployed?
A: Yes, over one hundred districts use our solution, many for over three years. We will be happy to provide you references.
Q: So what’s a good next step, how do I learn more?
A: You should view a demonstration of our solution. This can be arranged online using a Web conference. This one-on-one presentation will help us uniquely understand your survey needs and allow us to share some of our experience with similar districts. Click here to request the demo. |
