School Checkup

4-Minute Quiz Measures Schools' Learning Relationships

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/18/21

A national nonprofit has developed a way to assess how well a school is supporting the student-teacher-family relationship. The new "School Checkup" quiz was created by PowerMyLearning,  an organization that works on issues related to educational equity and accelerating students' social-emotional learning and academic achievement.

The School Checkup evaluates the strength of student-teacher-family relationships in four areas: the learning environment, instructional planning and delivery, data-driven decision-making and student agency. Each area gets four questions in the quiz.

The quiz, which is entirely multiple choice, takes about four minutes to go through. After participants are done answering the questions and provide their contact information, they receive immediate results along with links to practical ideas for improving their learning relationships.

The practices offered in the results are based in the organization's own Framework for Teachers, an instructional guide intended to help teachers implement culturally-responsive teaching and accelerate students' SEL and learning.

"At PowerMyLearning, our key insight is that students succeed when they have strong learning relationships with both their teachers and their families. Picture a triangle comprised of students, teachers and families with teachers and families reinforcing what each other is doing around curriculum," said CEO and Co-founder Elisabeth Stock, in a statement. "In the midst of a pandemic and nationwide racial reckoning, this triangle approach has never been more important. The School Checkup is a great resource to help school leaders identify blind spots and begin to develop strategies for bringing families into learning with compassion and purpose."

The quiz is openly available on the PowerMyLearning website.