Section 09 Reach: What is the best way to communicate findings to key audiences?
To make the most of your parent involvement data collection and analysis activities, you must effectively communicate your findings. There are many ways to communicate your results, such as
- Communicating internally among staff who are responsible for (or overseeing) data collection, analysis, and reporting to help them improve activities going forward
- Reporting your Indicator B8 percentage to OSEP
- Highlighting successes or challenges for local district or school staff, or for staff at your state’s PTI and CPRC
- Telling parents about how being more involved can help improve their child’s educational outcomes
It is beyond the scope of this toolkit to go into detail about communicating findings, so here we will briefly talk about two steps that you can take:
For more information, tools, and strategies to help you effectively communicate your findings, check out Effectively Communicating Evaluation Findings, which was developed by the Center to Improve Project Performance (CIPP) and is available on the OSEP IDEAs That Work website along with a number of other resources related to evaluation.
5 Tips for Effectively Communicating Parent Involvement Findings
- Consider what your audiences most want to know about parent involvement, in addition to the data and information you most want to share.
- Create your data collection/analysis and communications plans early, so that each can inform the other.
- Be succinct.
- Plan to use multiple modes or techniques for communication. Rarely is one technique or tool enough to fully reach your audiences.
- Investigate cost-effective means of communicating such as social media and web-based platforms.