YouthTruth concurrent and predictive validity study

Abstract

YouthTruth is a national survey project that harnesses student and stakeholder feedback to help guide decision-making by school leaders and education funders. With a grant from the Fund for Shared Insight, YouthTruth partnered with SRI Education to examine the relationship between key student experience scales and school-level academic and behavioral outcomes, including math and reading proficiency rates, ninth-grade retention rates, chronic absences rates, and suspensions. Using U.S. Department of Education EDFacts data and data from the Civil Right Data Collection, SRI researchers modeled the relationship between six student experience scales—academic challenge, engagement, culture, relationships with teachers, belonging and peer collaboration, and college and career readiness—and school-level outcomes, controlling for state as well as school demographic composition. We found strong confirmatory evidence that the six student experience scales from the YouthTruth elementary and secondary student surveys are associated with key school-level student academic and behavioral outcomes. These findings support the use of the YouthTruth student experience scales in school improvement efforts.