Our Projects
School Surveys in Belton Independent School District
The Challenge
Belton ISD, serving over 13,000 students in Central Texas, set an ambitious goal: to measure the district’s progress toward its Journey of a Graduate through reliable, actionable data. The district’s leadership also sought a way to monitor key board goals, such as collaboration, goal setting, self-directed learning, and personalized instruction, through annual feedback from students and parents. However, off-the-shelf survey instruments fell short of capturing Belton ISD’s unique priorities, and the district needed a partner who could design, implement, and interpret custom-built survey tools.
Our Support
Gibson partnered with Belton ISD to provide multi-year survey services built around the district’s strategic vision. Our team led the development, implementation, and reporting of annual student and parent surveys aligned to Belton ISD’s goals. Key elements of our support included:
Custom Instrument Design: From validated survey item banks, we created and annually updated student and parent surveys aligned to Belton’s Journey of a Graduate and board goal domains. Questions were preserved across years to enable year-over-year comparisons.
ClassLink Survey Administration: Student surveys were delivered through ClassLink, Belton’s single sign-on system. This streamlined access and improved response rates.
Parent Survey Administration: Parent surveys were distributed via individualized Qualtrics email links and universal links and were available in English and Spanish.
Student Group Results: Our approach linked responses to key demographic and program-level data, allowing Belton ISD to understand how experiences varied across different student groups, schools, and grade levels.
Dynamic Reporting Tools: We developed an interactive survey dashboard covering response rates, the representativeness of responding students against district demographics, domain summaries, and item detail, with filters for school, grade, and each student group. We also delivered school leaders their own scorecards each year, showing their school against the district on every goal and enabling leaders interpret and act on the data.
Leadership Data Workshops: Each year, Gibson led sensemaking sessions with district leaders, translating the data and helping teams identify priority areas for improvement.
Results
Belton ISD’s annual surveys became a cornerstone of its continuous improvement process. The district has used the results to:
Track measurable progress toward graduate profile goals across years;
Spot gaps in student experiences and parent perceptions;
Guide strategic conversations at the school board, central office, and campus levels;
Empower principals and staff with data to inform site-based improvement planning.
Survey response rates have remained strong, particularly among students, and feedback from district leaders has pointed to the surveys’ value in reinforcing a systemwide culture of reflection, accountability, and student-centered improvement.