Schools

How Do Schools Measure Student Hope? A $900K Gallup Survey

Montgomery County Public Schools will try to take a more "holistic" approach to measuring student achievement this fall.

By Whitney Teal

Dozens of data metrics and student demographic information can only say so much about a school system, it seems, as Montgomery County Public Schools officials are adding yet another layer of data to the pool: hope.

The Washington Post reports that students will be polled, beginning this fall, on more hard-to-pin-down aspects of their school life, like whether they’ve made friends or if they’re excited about pursuing their goals.

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“We’re taking a holistic view of what school performance looks like,” Superintendent Joshua P. Starr told The Post. “Rather than just saying it’s just about student achievement results, we’re saying it is also about how you get student achievement results.”

The district has paid Gallup, a national survey company, $900,000 to poll students for three years and help parse the data.

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