Overlooked Views in School Improvement: Middle School Teachers' Use of Elevate (PERTS) and Perceptions of Student Voice

Stemming from the democratic origins of schooling, viewing children as equal citizens and as active participants in their learning and curriculum development has become a growing focus of schools in the United States as of the late 20th century (Bron and Veugelers 2014; Kahne et al. 2022; Labaree 1997). A component of these beliefs include collecting ideas for school improvement from students though formal and informal methods. Formal methods to collect student feedback often take the form of Student Perception Surveys (SPS). While there is sufficient knowledge on crafting and administering these surveys, less is known about teacher's views of the surveys (Davis et al. 2021; Finefter-Rosenbluh et al. 2021). By conducting a qualitative study on one Chicago Public Schools (CPS) middle school's use of a SPS, I examine how teachers perceive student feedback from SPS and how that feedback affects their teaching practices. Elevate is the SPS chosen for this study. Created by the UChicago Consortium and PERTS, Elevate is a research-driven professional learning tool that measures students' perceptions of their learning conditions. This study builds upon previous research on CPS' use of SPS, but focuses on Elevate which has not been studied to the same extent as other SPS. The findings of this study revalidate that teachers are eager to use student voice and value how it can inform their practice. Additionally, teachers have created their own informal methods for collecting student feedback in everyday classroom practices. Teachers reported that with formal SPS, there are significant barriers to utilizing student voice effectively. With Elevate, these barriers are a result of a lack of communication between organizations, survey language not meeting student reading comprehension levels, and a history of negative SPS experiences. Despite these obstacles, teachers still find student voice essential and have suggestions for Elevate improvement. This study highlights how overlooking teacher perspectives results in gaps of knowledge on how SPS are being used within schools. This can lead to surveys' purpose of school improvement going unfulfilled. In order for SPS to provide a baseline for school improvement, there must be documentation of the changes teachers are implementing between survey cycles as well as established teacher buy-in.