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Highline Public Schools, located just outside of Seattle in Burien, WA, serves a diverse population of 18,000 students in 34 schools. Learn how district leaders use student voice data to empower students and engage them as co-creators of a new SEL program.
Challenges
- The social-emotional learning (SEL) team wanted to create a program for the district built on input and feedback from students.
- District leaders needed a way to gather feedback and elevate student voices— particularly those from underrepresented communities.
Solution
Results
- Panorama data revealed that many students were having a less-than-favorable experience at school, particularly in two key areas: sense of belonging and positive relationships with adults.
- Acting on this information, educators held community listening sessions to better understand what students and families need from the district.
- School leaders now regularly engage with data to inform Tier 1 MTSS practices to better understand how they can support students.
Challenges
Highline Public Schools’ strategic planning revolves around a single promise: “to know every student in Highline by name, strength, and need, and to help them graduate prepared for the future they choose.”
Melissa Pointer, the Director of Social-Emotional Learning at Highline, is determined to make this promise true for every single one of its 18,000 students.
Part of fulfilling the Highline promise involves developing district-wide social-emotional learning that serves every single student. “Highline is a really, special district, and a pretty unique district as well,” said Pointer. “We're a beautifully and richly diverse district, with students that represent so many different cultures.”
Pointer and her three colleagues in the SEL department were aware that their perspectives could not be enough to create a program that served their diverse district. They needed a way to gather feedback and insights from the community members at the heart of the issue: the students.
Solution
Highline piloted Panorama Feedback Surveys with students in 15 schools in 2021-22. Today, all 34 schools in the district use Panorama.
After administering Panorama's Student Survey in the spring of 2022, the district saw that students from underrepresented groups reported feeling a low sense of belonging. “Based on the gift of our Panorama data, we know that some groups of students are experiencing our district in a less-than-favorable way,” said Pointer. Data also showed those same students felt a lack of supportive adult relationships within the school.
Survey responses are shown on the Panorama platform. Please note that demo data is pictured.
“We knew it was time to dig in and examine the student experience in a deep and intentional way. The Panorama data allowed us to do that,” said Pointer. Over the past year, Pointer’s team has held several community listening sessions with students, families, and teachers to better understand their experiences at Highline and what they need in an SEL program.
Highline wants to engage students in designing and re-imagining their schools, programs, and the experiences that they have every day in the district, and Panorama feedback data is a powerful starting point. “It's really helping us identify groups of students that we need to dig in with further and engage more,” said Pointer. “We're encouraging our educators to go beyond asking for student input and pushing toward a place of engaging students as leaders in the development of the solution.”
Results
Since their first Panorama survey in early 2022, Pointer and her team have collected over 900 pieces of feedback data. They are in the process of partnering with researchers from the University of Washington to understand themes and trends. After that, they will partner with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to create a framework for district-wide SEL implementation.
In the first year of using Panorama, the district has seen MTSS teams creatively engage in data analysis to implement Tier 1 supports. For example, one high school was concerned about their sense of belonging data from the student survey. The principal formed a leadership team to develop indicators and “look-fors” for classrooms that would indicate a strong sense of belonging.
“There's just so many ways the data can be utilized at all three tiers of MTSS or PBIS. It's exciting to think about what's to come. We've only begun to use Panorama to leverage the support that schools and students need.”
Melissa Pointer, Director of Social-Emotional Learning,
Highline Public Schools (WA)
After sharing those indicators with school staff, the leadership team conducted classroom walkthroughs and peer observations to specifically look at signs of student belonging. Based on their learnings, the team developed professional development for teachers to help them build capacity in students’ sense of belonging. The district plans to engage students in refining the indicators and repeat the process as needed to build further on those practices.
“There's just so many ways the data can be utilized at all three tiers of MTSS or PBIS. It's exciting to think about what's to come,” said Pointer. “We've only begun to use Panorama to leverage the support that schools and students need.”
