The Kansas State Department of Education’s (KSDE) Accreditation and Redesign team is excited to roll out a School and District Culture Survey. 

As part of the Kansans Can School Redesign Project, all redesign schools were asked to administer a School Culture Survey annually. During the summer of 2020, the KSDE Redesign team worked with state comprehensive center partners at McRel to recreate the culture survey based on existing surveys and research regarding schools as learning organizations (Elmore, Forman, & Stosich, 2016; Kools et al., 2020). 

The finished survey measures five constructs of culture, including shared vision; inquiry, innovation and exploration; collective efficacy; psychological safety; and modeling learning leadership. 

After having more than 5,000 survey submissions during the past two years (spring 2021 and spring 2022), the survey is now available to all systems beginning this month. 

Building and maintaining a positive learning culture is crucial to student success, and schools should have a way to take the temperature of their school’s culture. This “temperature check” allows schools a chance to celebrate areas where they are strong and talk about the areas in which they need to grow. 

This data is an important part of a longitudinal story. If you would like to learn more about the survey and its constructs, check out this informational PowerPoint.