Every 2 years OSPI (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction) has all school districts in Washington State conduct a survey of students. In this survey they ask some very personal questions deal with drugs, sex and other issues. They use the responses to help formulate policies. For example, when the effort was being made to force the adoption of Comprehensive Sex Education Mr. Reykdal (State Superintendent) cited data from the survey. As the legislature starts the next session the very same data will be used to “demand” adoption. So that got us to wondering if we could get the results for school districts. The short answer is YES! The reality was a bit more challenging. It took nearly 2 months of continual efforts to get the reports for nine (9) districts in Southwest Washington.
In this article we’ll provide the survey by district. You can open them and/or download them. If your school district isn’t here never fear. You can file a Public Record Request through your school district and they MUST provide you with the report. If you get it electronically you can then share with others. There should be NO cost…but one district broke the report into 3 files and charged us $.05 per file (and reluctantly took cash but wanted a check) for a total of $0.15.
Remember that students have no incentive to be honest. Some will be embarrassed. Some will give silly or completely wrong answers to give the “finger” to the school system. OSPI says they use “checking questions” to determine accuracy.
Can you opt-out your student? Yes….you just need to know it’s being given and when. Districts sometimes seem to miss notifying parents.
Without further ado here are the files: Most of these files are LARGE in size and may take a few minutes to download/view
Let’s start off giving you links to the State level:
https://www.doh.wa.gov/DataandStatisticalReports/DataSystems/HealthyYouthSurvey They provide links to various pieces including the questions. The also offer “reports” in which they interpret the information in case you aren’t capable of doing it yourself. Of course they will be totally honest and not skew or twist the data at all. 👌
Next, here is the data for ESD112 (which covers all of the 9 districts below PLUS several others). This will let you see the overall summary: ESD112_2018_HYS_FactSheets
Woodland
Ridgefield
Ridgefield_Student_Survey_2018_HYS District_Grade8
Ridgefield_Student_Survey_2018_HYS Disrict_Grade10
Ridgefield_Student_Survey_2018_HYS District_Grade12
La Center
LaCenter_Student_Survey_District Report 2018
Battle Ground
HYS_FactSheets_BGSD_96_Pages_2018
Hockinson
Evergreen
Vancouver
Camas
Washougal
Summary:
- Review the questions to see if you think they are reasonable or not. If you have issues please contact your school district superintendent and share your thoughts
- School districts are supposed to notify you when they are going administer the survey. Since it’s only done every-other-year you may miss it
- You CAN Opt-Out by sending a letter to your school principal or the district superintendent. If you do Opt-Out and send a letter be sure to follow up in 7-10 days to make sure they got it and will remove the student
- Is the information really honest and accurate enough to use to help set policy? Given the mindset of teenagers I wouldn’t trust the answers…much less use them to push an agenda
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