District 303 wants parents to grade their children's education

Parents control the grading power in St. Charles Unit District 303 from now until next Tuesday.

The district is running a survey on its Web site that asks parents to rate and grade everything in the district, from the quality of food and cleanliness of their children's schools, to the curriculum of individual classes and performance of principals and school board members.

Mark Pomplun, the executive director of assessment, said the district has asked for parent input the past three years to help measure how it's doing.

"We're very interested in what the parents think about the schools as a whole in terms of their satisfaction level," Pomplun said. "We want to make sure we're improving at all levels."

The district hopes to get input from at least 3,000 parents. The results of the survey will be tabulated after the winter break and given to individual schools, district administration and school board members. Each of those groups will use the results to target areas of improvement and set goals for the satisfaction levels they hope to reach the next time there is a district survey.

"Most parents don't want to get up in front of a school board and tell them what they like and don't like," Pomplun said. "So this gives the average person a chance to tell us what they think."

The survey opened last week and already has 1,000 responses. That's already more responses than the district received from last year's survey.

The parent satisfaction survey is accessible through the home page of the district's Web site at cusd300.org. Pomplun estimates that it takes no more than 10 minutes to fill out.