District of Columbia Public School System

OVERVIEW

COVID-19 wreaked havoc on our society, including our public schools. With so many stakeholders, the District of Columbia Public School system (DCPS) partnered with Trendency to track the views of parents across the city, focusing on how remote learning was going for families and their thoughts on plans for opening schools to in-person learning.

APPROACH

Trendency worked with DCPS to recruit a panel of parents from across the city, ensuring that the panel represented all areas, demographics, and grade levels.

Initially, questions were focused on how the school year was going for parents and their students. Later in the engagement, DCPS added questions focused on re-opening.

RESULTS

Throughout the first half of the year, DCPS had better insight into parents, their views, and how these views were shifting as new information was provided to parents. That allowed for a steadier approach and a deeper understanding of the difference between parents of different demographic backgrounds.

There was no chance that 100% of parents would be happy with every decision but, with access to timely data, DCPS could make decisions based on the current views held by parents across the city rather than simply reacting to the loudest voices in the room. DCPS could also try to better anticipate the reaction to different plans before they were made public.