Programs: ✅ Ascend ⛔ Catalyze ✅ Elevate
Reports can help educators accomplish two primary goals:
Educators can learn how students are experiencing their classes and access strategies that can improve each learning condition (Ascend, Elevate).
As educators implement new practices, they can track the impact of those new practices. Every class is different and a practice change that had an impact in one class might not have the same impact in another.
As educators review their reports, they should consider the following:
This is a partnership with students. Ascend and Elevate are not climate surveys. Rather, they lay the foundation for ongoing partnership and conversations with students. It’s important to convey this message when the survey is introduced and equally important to debrief the results with students. In this video, middle school teacher Ashley Kannan shares his experiences debriefing the survey results with students and how it shifted his class dynamics.
Survey results may be lower than expected. It’s common to be surprised and even disappointed by survey results, particularly in the first cycle. Most educators find there’s a big gap between their intentions and what their students actually experience in class. Don’t be too hard on yourself, consider it an opportunity to focus your improvement efforts. As Maya Angelou stated, “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better.”
Student feedback can support improvement, not evaluation. Ascend and Elevate data surface what students need more of to be successful and we encourage selecting the starting point to your improvement journey that feels right for you. In addition, Ascend and Elevate data are not designed to evaluate educators. It would be invalid to evaluate teachers based on students’ impressions because students enter the classroom with mindsets and expectations that have been shaped by their prior experiences. That’s why report access and sharing can be controlled by teachers.
PERTS provides lots of guidance! For example, next to each Report table you can find guidance on what you can learn from that table. In Reports, you’ll also find links to resources on how to improve each learning condition.