High marks

Editor's note: William H. Stearrett Jr. is the research specialist for the New Castle County (Del.) Vocational Technical School District.

Without a doubt, schools are a valuable asset to a community. By definition a good school provides a solid education, but it also serves as a magnet for families seeking a place to raise children. And since graduates often stay in or return to the same community to make their living, schools can have a long-lasting local influence.

As providers of important services and tangential benefits, schools should not leave customer satisfaction to chance. But schools and school districts are not known as adroit users of marketing research. Few can match the business sector's efforts to measure customer satisfaction, market share and perceived image in the community.

The New Castle County Vocational Technical School District in Delaware is an exception. Under the leadership of Superintendent Dennis Loftus, the NCCVTSD has developed and maintains a comprehensive program of marketing research and performance reporting that compares favorably to many businesses'. The district comprises three high schools - Delcastle Technical High School, Hodgson Vocational Technical High School and Howard High School of Technology - and serves all 435 square miles of New Castle County.

Students and parents are customers As with other community-based service organizations - such as banks and hospitals - customer satisfaction is a key performance indicator for the school district. In the program currently up and running in New Castle County, customers - students and parents - are surveyed every two years to assess overall customer satisfaction as well as satisfaction with a number of specific school characteristics, including quality of teachers. the school environment and teacher-parent communication, on a 1-5 scale. Survey participants are also asked if they would recommend their school to friends (and why or why not), and what they like and dislike about their school. Their responses to the open-ended questions often confirm the mean satisfaction ratings and flesh out the statistical results. Space is also provided for respondents to make suggestions for improvement.

Teachers are also asked to participate in the survey, and a comparison of the students', parents' and teachers' responses yields valuable results that can be displayed on perceptual maps. Comparisons of various segments within the student population provide an increased awareness of customer needs. For example, it's important to figure out why students in the upper grades are less satisfied than those in grades nine and 10, and why many seniors don't know what they will do after graduation. Students' future plans are critical to the district's market-positioning strategy because the schools must strike a balance between efforts to prepare students for employment (a perceived strength) and prepare them for college (a perceived weakness).

Anticipating the future

The district's marketing research et: forts aren't limited to customer satisfaction surveys. Parents of students in grades six, seven and eight in the district's market area were surveyed three years ago to discover image perceptions, identify misconceptions and gaps in district's schools, and assess the likelihood of parents' choosing a vo-tech high school education for their sons or daughters.

The research identified misconceptions about the district - regarding the proportion of female students and the proportion of graduates who go to college - that were subsequently addressed specifically in the district's application, open house invitation and recruitment video, entitled "Choices in a Changing World."

Survey results relating to parents' likely school selections matched actual market share figures, which the district tracks each year as part of the admissions process. The district has seen a steady increase in market share in recent years: This year's 1,800 applications exceeded enrollment openings by roughly 800 students. The district plans to again survey prospective customers in the community in January 1995.

The district also conducts an annual graduate follow-up survey to check on the status of students six to 12 months after graduation and to obtain retrospective comments on satisfaction and suggestions for improvement. The research design for the graduate survey includes an initial mail survey and subsequent data collection via phone, with multiple call-backs to ensure randomness, minimize nonresponse bias and attain a majority response rate. To date, results by mail have not differed significantly from results obtained by phone. The district also surveys exiting students to uncover their reasons for leaving. The school separates factors it can influence, such as dislike of the school, from reasons for leaving that it can not affect, such as relocation.

Selecting indicators and setting standards

District officials get a complete picture of school performance by combining information on customer satisfaction and market position with traditional measures of the quality of a school - school climate and student achievement. Taking a cue from successful service businesses, the NCCVTSD utilizes measures of customer satisfaction and market share in its regular reporting procedures to school administrators. Other, more traditional school performance indicators are also measured: student attendance, staff attendance, outside suspension rate, infraction rate, test scores, grade distribution, enrollment retention, co-op employment, and graduate follow-up status.

For each of these measures, the district has set a standard of acceptance and a standard of excellence based on discussions with administrators, teachers, members of the business advisory committees and parents. The starting point for establishing standards is an honest appraisal of both current performance and the ability of the schools to meet objectives in the future. State and regional averages, past performance within the district and the performance of respected competitors serve as guidelines.

It is important that performance standards be measurable, reliable, valid, reasonably attainable, related to strategic objectives and action plans, based on internal appraisal and relevant competitive comparisons, and described in terms that are easy to understand.

School report cards

Each school's actual performance is not only tracked, it's also evaluated according to the standards that have been set. At the end of each marking period - when the students get their report cards - each of the schools also gets a report card. Measures that do not meet the standard of acceptance are accompanied by a check mark and require explanation and a plan for improvement from the school's principal.

A principal also provides reasons for progress when a substantial improvement in performance is realized, allowing other schools to share successful tactics and strategies. To record their reports, principals use a form specifically designed for the task. The forms are designed to associate events and activities that may affect school performance.

The reports - three marking-period reports and a final, more detailed annual report - have focused attention on performance improvement and led to welcome change. Since the 1989-1990 school year, attendance has improved by 3 percentage points and outside suspension rates have declined by 50 percent. Compared with the first customer satisfaction survey of parents (conducted in 1992), the second survey (1994) revealed a significant improvement in the rating of overall satisfaction (from 3.83 to 4.01 on a 1-5 scale) and an increase in the percentage of responding parents whose expectations were met or exceeded (from 87 percent to 90 percent).

Foresight and support

The foresight and support of district administration encouraged the development of both the comprehensive marketing research program and the performance reporting system. The information on the performance reports is recognized as important to the administrative and teaching staff and is used by district administration and the Board of Education in strategic planning and goal-setting.

The NCCVTSD is on a path that few secondary school systems have traveled. The journey continues to inform the district's efforts - convincing administrators to learn more about its customers and its perceived image, and helping them develop helpful and useful questions and measurements.

Since the coming years likely will witness the offering of more choices for education, schools with a track record of marketing research and performance reporting will be best positioned to succeed as a respected part of the community and as a preparer of young adults. Marketing research and performance reporting have certainly enabled the New Castle County Vocational Technical School District to be better prepared for the future.