All district schools, including alternative schools that fall under the district’s domain, are required to participate in a survey of learning conditions annually.

The AdvancED Surveys are designed for an educational institution to gather data on the perceptions, opinions and overall knowledge of various facets of the institution from various groups with interest in school operations – parents, staff, students, and outside stakeholders. Survey data results are an essential source of data for any institution that desires to “see the institution through the eyes of its stakeholders” and to understand how it can improve its governance, instructional program, resources and support for students, and stakeholder involvement. Survey results should serve as one of several powerful pieces of data an institution’s leadership uses to inform its improvement planning and organizational effectiveness efforts.

Each survey statement is aligned to the AdvancED Standards for Quality Schools and AdvancED Standards for Quality School Systems; the statements are written to elicit the perceptions students, parents, and staff have of their school's performance. The survey statements require someone to respond from a personal perspective, such as “My school” or “My child’s teacher," rather than from a collective perspective, such as “Our principal” or “Our school.”

As the surveys are designed to measure perceptions and opinions, survey responses are aggregated over items and persons within the same institution to provide measurements that reflect the collective perceptions of a respondent group (e.g., parents). Each item requests the respondent rate his/her opinion using a five-point scale of “Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, and Not Applicable." Additionally, all surveys have two or three open-ended questions that give the respondents an opportunity to further express their opinions about the institution without any rating scale or specific question to frame the responses.