History

Who are you?

About Online School Surveys

Online School Surveys started because Melissa Getz saw the need for schools to acquire perception data without it being difficult to collect or present. The business started because Ms. Getz bought this really expensive software so that her school could gather opinions from their students, staff, and parents while preparing for their WASC visit. It had been numerous years since a thorough survey had been done and Melissa wanted to give all stakeholders a voice. She needed software that was very flexible and would allow data to be disaggregated so that subgroups could be identified. Now that she better understands the process, she wants to help schools not only obtain data, but be able to use it when making decisions.

Continued connection with the WASC process:

Ms. Getz has served on three visiting committees in the last few years. To respect the schools' privacy, they will not be listed. To give you an idea, though, of the types of schools she has visited, here are some descriptions.

School 1

School 1 is a surburban school with about 1000 students. The neighborhood is one where teachers are now teaching the children of their former students. Students will go to college, become a teacher, and come back to the school to continue their relationship with the school, but as a teacher.

School 2

School 2 is an urban school that at the time was starting the SAIT program. Like with many schools that are doing SAIT and WASC at the same time, much of the staff did not want to continue with analyzing themselves and go through the WASC process. They felt their SAIT action plan was enough. It is not enough. SAIT's plan is not the same as WASC's. They are related and SAIT's plan can be incorporated into the WASC self study and action plan. But hiring a consultant to write a SAIT plan does not relieve your school of the responsibility of proving what is taught, how it is taught, how you communicate with parents, and how well you take care of your kids.

School 3

School 3 is located in the middle of nowhere. They have less than 50 students in grades 9 - 12. In other words, less than 50 kids go to the school. There are about 5 content teachers, 1 administrator, and very few office people. It is tiny. Yet even though there are so few people there who are already incredibly overworked, they were expected to put together a full report.