Survey: Dist. 203 grads have high expectations for themselves

Naperville Unit District 203’s motto is “building a passion for lifelong learning,” but until recently administrators had no real way to know if it was happening.

Sure, they had a feeling based on former students returning to check in with teachers and share their success stories — but that is a relatively small sample size. From this point forward, however, district officials have a plan to check in with seniors right before they graduate and a few times after to see how the real world is treating them.

“It’s not just a graduate class survey. We really want to follow these students on and really look at their perceptions as they leave high school,” said David Chiszar, the district’s director of research and assessment. “And we intend to check in with them again at 18 months and five years out.”

Chiszar unveiled the first results of the first anonymous graduating class survey the district conducted, taken by about 90 percent of the 2010 graduating class.

According to those results, 92 percent of the class of 2010 planned to attend at least four years of college and 66 percent of them planned to earn a degree beyond a bachelor’s.

“Two-thirds of our students expected to see some sort of advanced degree as they walked out the door,” he said. “When we hit that five-year mark, it will be interesting to see where they are and what they’re doing.”

As for career choices, 33 percent indicate they intend to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, followed closely by 32 percent who indicated they hope to pursue careers in the arts, audio/visual technology and communications.

“That’s the world of these kids,” Chiszar said. “Everyone wants to be a director and use the latest technology.”

The students also provided some insight to their previous four years of high school. About 96 percent said they felt safe at school, and 90 percent said they did not perceive bullying to be a problem.

“We want to know how we prepare our students for the future. We don’t prepare our students to become 18 years old,” he said. “We really are preparing kids for the future, so we want to look at once they leave here and they’ve flown out of the nest, what’s going on and what do they know?”

With the first survey under his belt, Chiszar said plans now include an eighth-grade exit survey to give the junior high schools information as baseline data for students entering high school. The first 18-month survey will be conducted in December.

”This is one piece of data,” Chiszar said. “But where this will really become interesting is when we get that second piece of data and third piece of data, and then we get several graduating classes and see what it all means over time.”