How School Leaders Use Feedback for Student Retention Goals

Learn how Kayleigh, Lead Founder and Superintendent of Étoile Academy Charter, has organized “step back reviews” of Possip data 

Kaleigh likes to open a report and assign feedback right away. She uses the “Copy” and “Email” buttons on the report or screenshots comments and then sends them to the appropriate colleagues for immediate follow-up. 

Transcript: “I just literally screenshot things and send it to staff members and say by end of the day follow up with this parent and circle back with me to let me know how it went.”

She also schedules routine “step back reviews” with her team to intentionally talk about the data in relation to specific goals.

Transcript: “But then we do have some more like kind of step back reviews. So, we have a monthly student retention meeting where we really go through the student feedback and really talk about parent feedback too and talk about, what could we do to continue to improve our student retention.”

Listen to this minute-long clip to hear a success story in Kaleigh’s own words about how Possip data and these “step back reviews” helped her team create policies supporting student retention. 

Transcript: “So one small shift that we made is that we have a seminar for eighth graders where they apply to high schools, and we help them with that and the eighth graders were saying that they were jealous of other schools where you could use your phones, and so, we decided that in that seminar they can use their cellphones to do research, play music, whatever as they’re working on their high school applications. So we just kind of rolled that out in response to their feedback to help student retention. 

I think that you can do both like a quick like “down and dirty” handle-this-situation and problem solve. And you can also do like a step back where you have more time to really think about like what are some things we can put in place and policies we can change to make students experiences even better.”