Parent Experience & Survey Results
Evidence of a rollout that prioritized speed over parent partnership.
What parents told the district: the Q1 SBG survey results
In November 2025, the district administered a survey to 6th grade families about their experience with the first Standards-Based report card. The survey was open for one week (November 11–18, 2025). 35 families responded, a 32% response rate.
The results were presented to the Board of Education on December 18, 2025 — but were never proactively shared with the broader 6th grade parent community, despite multiple parents requesting them. This was only acquired by parents through a FOIA request. What follows is the data the district collected and what it shows.
How the District Framed Its Own Results
"Families that feel very strongly about SBG, tended to represent the vast majority of survey respondents."
This was the district's first line of framing before presenting the results — essentially pre-emptively suggesting the survey skewed negative because of highly-engaged respondents. This framing is worth noting: the district administered this survey, set the one-week window, and chose the questions. Suggesting the results reflect only "strongly feeling" families, rather than treating them as valid parent feedback, is itself a signal of how administration has responded to community concerns throughout this process.
Survey Methodology Concerns
Three structural issues limit the survey's reach and the district's ability to claim that it adequately captured parent sentiment:
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One-week window (Nov 11–18): The survey closed before many parents had time to engage with it. The short window favors parents who happened to be checking email that week.
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32% response rate: Only about one-third of 6th grade families responded. The district acknowledges it has "no baseline data to compare findings" — this was the first report-card survey at Field.
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Results never shared back: Despite multiple parents emailing to request the survey results, they were not published to the community. They were presented exclusively at the December 18 Board of Education meeting — a venue most parents don't monitor in real time.
Question-by-Question Results
Q1: Understanding SBG
76.5% of respondents found the Q1 report card unclear. This represents a significant majority of parents who felt the new system did not accurately communicate their child's progress.
The district characterizes this as a communication problem for new families who did not go to Winkelman — but 6th grade families at Field - regardless of if they went to Winkelman or not - were encountering SBG for the first time at the middle school level under a fundamentally different academic structure. The district's assumption that Winkelman families will have a strong understanding of SBG at the middle school level is deeply flawed and problematic - middle school SBG is a significantly more complex change than at elementary school.
Q2: Understanding the Report Card
76.5% of parents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the report card clearly communicated their child's progress.
The district's explanation (early in the year, not all standards reported yet) does not address the core feedback: parents couldn't make sense of what they were looking at. A "one-pager" to help interpret the report card is an acknowledgment that the report card itself was not self-explanatory — which is the problem parents identified. A "one-pager" is also far from sufficient.
Q3: Understanding of Standards Performance Levels
42.9% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 40% agreed or strongly agreed. This is the survey's most "even" result — but it means that after a full quarter, nearly half of parents still didn't understand what B/D/M/E meant for their child.
The district characterizes the 57% who somewhat understood as a positive. But framing 43% confusion after a full quarter of implementation as acceptable progress is a low bar.
Open-response feedback revealed that many students felt demotivated by the lack of traditional benchmarks, creating stress within the learning environment.
Q4: Understanding of Student's Learning Behaviors
Approximately 71% of parents disagreed or strongly disagreed that this section of the report card was helpful or understandable.
This is an acknowledgment, in the district's own words, that a core component of the SBG report card was not adequately explained to families before they received it.
Q5: Overall Communication Support
51.4% of parents felt they did not receive sufficient information about how SBG works. Only 25.7% felt they had.
“Nearly 50% satisfied" is one way to read a result where 51.4% said no. The district's explanation — a "narrow window for communication" around the switch from hybrid to fully standards-based grading — is actually a confirmation of a key community concern: the last-minute October change from hybrid to full SBG (made without parent input or advance notice) left no time for adequate communication. The district here essentially admits that by confirming the window was too narrow.
Open Responses — What Parents Said in Their Own Words
The following is feedback collected directly from families during the district’s November 2025 survey process.
Core Themes from Parent Feedback
Inconsistent Application: SBG is confusing and inconsistently applied across teachers
Student Demotivation: Students feel demotivated by the grading system
The High School Gap: Parents are worried about the gap between middle school SBG and traditional high school grading systems.
What the District Said It Would Do Next
