With the challenges in the charter sector around growth, enrollment, and authorizing new schools, new school applicants need to demonstrate a viable plan to achieve sufficient enrollment upon opening.

This brief offers guidance on how charter authorizers, district offices, and charter management organizations can gather actionable insights about their communities by using community surveys. It presents step-by-step recommendations for the process of administering an effective survey, including:

  • clearly defining its scope, and
  • planning for outreach, administration, data analysis, and communication.

Community surveys are valuable tools for gathering a wealth of data about the interests and needs of specific communities and populations. The extensive pool of respondents in these surveys makes it possible to disaggregate data based on various characteristics, enabling a more thorough examination of diverse viewpoints. Also, community surveys can be leveraged as a partial means to fulfill the criteria outlined by the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Programs (CSP) Grant.

With this guide, charter sector interest holders can strengthen their decision-making process by using community surveys to make data-informed decisions so that schools, programs, and services align with community assets and needs.

Related Readings

The following resources offer further considerations for charter operators and authorizers interested in more ideas and practices for strengthening community engagement:

Assessing Community Needs: Strategies for Charter Schools and Authorizers. This resource outlines promising practices and suggested steps for assessing community needs using a variety of data collection strategies.

This resource on authentic community meetings shares ideas for how authorizers can plan inclusive community meetings that capture authentic community input.