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Collect insights with the Family-School Relationships Survey

Gather feedback to engage families in their school communities and better support students using the Panorama Family-School Relationships Survey, a research-backed survey instrument.

Download the Survey
Family Survey: Engages families in their school communities

About the Panorama Family-School Relationships Survey

Research shows that when schools successfully engage families, students earn higher grades, score higher on tests, develop better social skills, and are more likely to graduate. The Family-School Relationships Survey supports that engagement by helping districts gather timely feedback, including how families want to receive information, their comfort with AI tools, and their understanding of the school’s approach to attendance.

Cover of the Family-School Relationships Survey user guide, offering instructions for implementing a parent survey for schools

Measuring parent attitudes to improve student outcomes

Schools can use the Family-School Relationships Survey to gather feedback while effectively engaging parents and guardians. By doing so, schools help develop parents’ capacity to contribute to their children’s learning—an important factor in promoting positive student outcomes.

Designed as a series of scales—groups of questions that capture different aspects of the same underlying theme—the Family-School Relationships Survey provides educators flexibility in measuring an array of aspects of parent attitudes.

The survey is designed for use by principals, district staff, school boards, state departments of education, or parent/teacher organizations. The survey can be administered to any K-12 school community (public, private, independent, charter, urban, or rural) and has already been used by thousands of schools nationwide.

It is available in 10 additional languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin,  and more. For schools and districts interested in advanced survey software and programs, learn more about Panorama Surveys and Engagement.

Excerpt From Panorama’s Family-School Relationship Survey

School Climate

Sample question: To what extent do you think that children enjoy going to your child’s school?

 

School Attendance 

Sample question: How important is it for your child to have good school attendance this year?

 

Cell Phones Impact

Sample question: Overall, how much of a distraction are cell phones in your child’s classes?

 

AI Priorities: Foundations

Sample question: How important is it for staff at your child's school to have professional development on AI?

 

School-Family Communication 

Sample question: How often do you receive information from your child’s school?

 

Staff-Family Relationships 

Sample question: At your child’s school, how respectful are the staff towards you?

Check out how districts are using the Panorama Family-School Relationship Survey to improve student outcomes

Maple Run Unified School District Coppell Independent School District Wake County Public School System

“What we realized in talking to families is that we completely missed the mark in terms of childcare...We've partnered with the Recreation Department and some community organizations around summer programming that engage kids for a full day—actually even a longer time than they would if they were in school.”

John Muldoon
Assistant Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District (VT)

MaplerunVT_School_Email_resources
Learn More About Our Work with Maple Run Unified School District

Our family and parent survey research methodology

Dr. Hunter Gehlbach, Professor and Vice Dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and Senior Research Advisor at Panorama Education, led the development of the Family-School Relationships Survey in collaboration with Co-Principal Investigators Dr. Karen Mapp and Dr. Richard Weissbourd, both from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Additional research-backed survey topics were developed by Dr. David Kowalski.

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Research Methodology: focus group engagement

Turn family feedback into insight—and insight into action.

Collecting feedback is only the first step. Panorama helps districts understand parent and guardian attitudes and take action based on what they learn.

Measure family experiences with research-backed surveys, then connect those insights with attendance, behavior, academic, and student engagement data in Panorama's unified platform to understand what's happening across your schools and where action is needed most.

Supporting Capabilities

  • Choose from 800+ research-backed questions or build your own surveys.

  • Quickly identify trends, opportunities, and areas for growth with AI-powered insights and national benchmarks.

  • Compare results across schools and student groups to identify priority areas.

Screenshot of Panorama's student survey software interface showing how school climate results have changed over time

Why It Matters

Survey data shows you what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what to do next. With that context, your teams can take targeted action, from improving school climate to addressing root causes of absenteeism and disengagement—consistently, across every school in your district.

Explore Panorama Surveys and Engagement
Screenshot of Panorama's survey software showing staff feedback survey data

Frequently asked questions about the Panorama Family-School Relationship Survey