Whitefield Academy Whitefield Academy has emerged as one of Atlanta’s leading Christian preparatory schools serving students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. Since 1996, its focus has been on delivering a comprehensive Christian education that enhances students’ spiritual, intellectual, moral, and physical development. Whitefield regularly competes with the large number of private schools in Atlanta in recruiting and retaining students. Recently Whitefield partnered with Lassiter & Associates to help obtain anonymous feedback from parents. Their input would provide a reading of how Whitefield was performing in several areas as well as help position the school to grow enrollment. The Process To develop a comprehensive online survey that would encourage open and honest feedback from its school community, Lassiter first worked to understand the goals of Whitefield’s board and headmaster. “What I liked tremendously was that Lassiter sought to understand us first, and then designed the survey to accommodate some fairly rigorous needs that we had in communicating with our families,” said Whitefield Academy Board of Trustees Chairman John C. Horton. This was Whitefield’s first survey of this type and its needs were extensive. Lassiter was able to design a survey tool that could be completed quickly by parents yet provide plenty of opportunity for them to express opinions and suggestions. “I thought it was quite ingenious, even innovative, to provide so many opportunities for the parents to give direct feedback,” said Mr. Horton. Beyond the survey, Lassiter worked with Whitefield in identifying creative methods to encourage parent participation and explain the benefits of completing the survey. Lassiter then delivered the promotional tactics and tools in calendar format – including newsletter copy and custom Web site images – to make it easy to implement. The Results The results were astounding and included a 69 percent response rate. “Whitefield can be very confident that the trends we reported are reliable. The excellent participation by parents yielded a 99 percent confidence level in survey findings,” said Nancy Chambers, managing director of Lassiter & Associates. In addition to families evaluating the performance of Whitefield’s academics, extra-curricular programs, faculty, administration, marketing, and faith-based programs, more than 3,100 unique comments from parents further supported the ratings and painted a clearer picture of where Whitefield stands with parents. “The level of detail that Lassiter was able to provide was amazing,” said Whitefield Academy Headmaster John H. Lindsell, Ed.D. “It helped pinpoint why people are choosing our school and why they are staying so that will have all kinds of implications for our marketing, our branding, and positioning. It also helped us better understand what the parents see as our strengths, and that too will help us attract and retain students.” Whitefield plans to put into action the results of the survey. “Over the summer we are going to turn this work into activities and programs that will be a tremendous benefit for our school, especially when our parents start seeing things that they suggested result in enhancements for the academy,” said Mr. Horton. Why conduct a Parent Survey “We have a family atmosphere and family culture at Whitefield, but our family is big and it is hard to hear from them,” said Mr. Horton. Not only are there many parents to speak with, Dr. Lindsell thinks that schools in general sometimes lose sight of the fact that its parents and students are customers. “It is a voluntary relationship that we have. We are not their school district; they choose to affiliate with us. If you can find out the things you are doing well and the things that need improvement, it is only going to strengthen your school in the long run; and doing a periodic survey is a very good tool to get that done.” Additionally, the anonymous nature of the survey also encouraged feedback from parents who otherwise might not have expressed their concerns or satisfaction. “Parents quite often are reluctant to share their opinions with school administrators because they think it will fall back on their children,” said Dr. Lindsell. “Nothing could be further from the truth, but by protecting parents anonymity they are able to express opinions they might not otherwise share and alert you to your strengths as well as your weaknesses.” Why use Lassiter & Associates “The recent Parent Survey at Whitefield produced one of the most complete and professionally presented data sets I have ever seen,” said Mr. Horton. “Lassiter & Associates was not only great to work with, but their knowledge of the survey process and our situation was extraordinary. Their work is as innovative as it is complete and professional.”