Customers Never Tell Unless You Ask.

The voice of the customer is one that will help provide accurate direction for a school district, large or small. Typically districts rely on committees and task forces with their stakeholder representatives to gain community feedback and buy-in to decisions.

Unfortunately, this does not always yield a balanced, accurate voice. Volunteer participants represent only a small sampling of individual viewpoints and opinions.

By using informal focus groups, satisfaction surveys and other systematic measures for community listening, school district leadership can gain broad and balanced answers to three critical questions:

* What do your customers expect from you?

* Is there a gap between what your customers expect and what your employees, programs and services deliver?

* How can you meet and retain customer satisfaction, trust and support?

Inexpensive Strategies

Two distinctly different Midwestern school districts--Appleton, Wis., and Richmond, Ill.--have practiced systematic community listening. These districts have made the decision to partner typical community involvement with the use of focus groups, surveys, and interview strategies.

This has been done informally without expensive research divisions as district personnel have borrowed cost-effective ideas and practices from business and marketing specialists. District costs include only survey production, employee time and any resources allocated to data analysis and report publication.

Both school communities face the challenges of changing demography related to enrollment growth while shackled to legislative restrictions on revenues and expenditures. Neither district can afford to head in a direction that does not match community expectations. While Appleton is a larger K-12 district (14,500 students) in a medium-sized city environment and Richmond is a small K-8 district (1,700 students) in a rural/suburban environment, the same listening strategies work.

Non-Threatening Environment

To balance the voice of the customer with the established voices of the district and the educational profession, school districts wanting to improve listening should first create and model a safe climate that values listening.

For Appleton's first satisfaction survey, this meant forming a diverse survey writing team comprised of teachers, administrators, parents, students and board of education members. The first survey for the elementary-and middle-level families was developed using this safe, non-threatening team approach.

At the outset, teachers and administrators expressed concerns that survey results could be used to negatively compare the performances of principals, teachers, students and schools. By including all stakeholder voices during the writing process, the purpose and use of the family satisfaction survey was clarified so that all could support the concept. Other district survey teams now model this successful process.

In Richmond, informal focus groups, listening sessions and satisfaction surveys were systematically modeled by the superintendent. Prior to the board of education's recent evaluation of the superintendent, families, teachers, administrators and board members were asked to complete a satisfaction survey measuring superintendent effectiveness.

Through such modeling, the use of informal focus groups, surveys and structured interviews has become a way of doing business. Whether the issue is contracting out for student busing, phonics, state standards or professional performance, listening has become balanced and systematic.

Additional Strategies

From our districts' experiences, we have developed some recommendations to improve the quality and use of stakeholder input:

* Do not ask what you cannot deliver; do not offer impossible opportunities.

* Incorporate nationally normed questions from other survey sources when possible and sensible.

* Expand diversity by using multiple languages appropriate to your community.

* Chart data in an easy-to-understand format and widely report the results to the news media and community.

* Identify weaknesses and strengths. Explain how you will correct weaknesses and celebrate successes.

* Consistently use results to guide district goal setting and decision making.

* Continue to listen; make listening a way of doing business.

Thomas Scullen is superintendent of the Appleton Area School District.