Rochester Public Schools unveils Five Essentials survey results; leaders flag participation gaps and areas to improve

Rochester Public Schools leaders on Tuesday presented baseline results from the Five Essentials (5E) school-improvement survey and described how the district will use the data to drive school-level plans.

The district reported high completion among grades 4—6 (often 70—5%), lower but acceptable high-school participation, about two-thirds staff completion and roughly 20% family response overall — the threshold the 5E research team considers sufficient for reporting. District staff said they will publish an interactive dashboard and provide disaggregated data to the board and school leaders.

Why it matters: The Five Essentials measures school systems linked to student outcomes — effective leaders, collaborative teachers, supportive environment, involved families and ambitious instruction. Superintendent Kent Pel and district staff said the survey is intended as a diagnostic to inform school improvement teams, not as a stand-alone measure.

Key findings and next steps: District leaders said four of five domains fall in a neutral band and ambitious instruction is the area showing the most need for improvement. Staff called out one notable family-reported figure: about 7% of responding households said they do not have home internet access, a likely undercount that could affect both survey participation and learning access. Leaders said they will:

- Publish the district dashboard and share the link publicly; - Give principals and skip (school-improvement) teams disaggregated results to inform three-year improvement planning; - Work over the summer to crosswalk effective-leader items to the district's principal framework and to boost family participation in future administrations.

Board members asked how the 5E compares to models used in much larger districts such as Chicago and cautioned against assuming identical results or implementation paths; district leaders said the 5E is intended to be applied at the school level and that local comparison schools exist for benchmarking. Several board members pressed for clearer outreach and response-rate strategies, and asked that the district provide breakdowns by school and student groups — a request staff agreed to fulfill.

What happens next: District staff said principals are already using the results in school-level skip planning, and the district will publish the interactive dashboard the day after the meeting and continue to encourage higher family participation before the next administration of the survey.