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Miami-DadeWhat families and staff saymedium

How school survey responses relate to later enrollment change

Thesis

The district surveys students, parents and staff every spring. The analysis asks whether school-level survey measures are associated with subsequent enrollment change after adjusting for utilization, school grade, level and size. The two follow-up windows both end in 2025-26: one spans four years and the other three, with many of the same schools. They are not independent replications over an identical horizon. The analysis page reports the coefficients after the corrected favorable-response scoring, plus same-school comparisons and multiplicity-adjusted tests.

Supporting findings

  • Pre-registered model: log change in October membership from the survey year to 2025-26 for district-run schools, regressed on the survey share and controls. Read current estimates, sample sizes and uncertainty from the linked analysis packet.
  • A positive coefficient is an association, not evidence that changing survey sentiment would change enrollment. Selection, school changes and families already intending to leave may contribute.
  • Year-to-year correlations describe stability, not measurement reliability alone: genuine changes in sentiment and changes in respondents are also possible. They cannot establish that sampling noise explains a smaller coefficient. The common-school comparison, paired bootstrap and Holm adjustment were added after the original analysis.

Reporting directions

  • Pull the 2021-22 and 2022-23 student recommend shares for the schools now listed for closure and for the unlisted low-utilization schools; several had the district's lowest student ratings years before the list.
  • Interview students and parents at schools that rated low and then lost students: what did they know that the capacity numbers did not?
  • Ask the district whether it uses its own survey in the closure process; the ABC book does not cite it.

Where the numbers are

Methodology & replication recipe — the queries and sources behind the findings above.