This archived page provided information for school year 2022-2023 related to operating Ecollect and issuing School Climate Surveys. Please visit the main page for Climate Surveys & Ecollect Forms during the month of October and as needed for information related to School Climate Surveys for school year 2023-2024.
Office Hour for PowerSchool Administrators
During an ORDA Office Hour on February 16, the ORDA Data Collection Team shared information regarding Ecollect functionality as it pertains to School Climate Surveys.
To report technical issues and request support related to Ecollect, district technical contacts should do one of the following:
Ecollect product enhancement requests may be submitted through PowerSchool’s Ideas Portal.
Documentation & Resources
- Ecollect Portal Access for SC
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This document steps through access to eCollect forms (including Climate Surveys) for students, parents, teachers, and administrators.
- 2022-2023 Accountability Manual
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The 2022-2023 Accountability Manual for the Annual School and District Report Card System for South Carolina Public Schools and School Districts specifies usage of School Climate Survey responses in calculating School Report Card metrics.
School Climate Survey Frequently Asked Questions
How will School Climate surveys be administered this year?
The student and teacher surveys will be administered (delivered and submitted) through the Ecollect system in PowerSchool; they will be released directly to student and teacher respondents to complete and submit through an Ecollect Form accessible through Student Portal or Teacher Portal.
The parent survey will be administered through Qualtrics, and links to the Qualtrics survey will be available through Ecollect (an Ecollect form will be delivered to parents, accessible through Parent Portal, that provides the Qualtrics survey link). Additionally, for parent surveys, the South Carolina Department of Education will provide QR code pdfs to districts that request that support. A comma separated value format will be provided to districts that deliver parent surveys through other district communication methods.
Please see the Accessing Ecollect Forms document linked to from this page for instructions on how respondents (students, teachers, and parents) can access their respective School Climate surveys. Note that URLs for accessing PowerSchool portals (i.e., the PowerSchool Parent/Student Portal and Teacher Portal) vary from district to district; typically, in place of the word “admin,” Parent/Student Portal URLs include either the word “public” or “guardian,” and the word “teachers” is typically present in the case of Teacher Portal URLs.
How many types of School Climate surveys are there?
There are three School Climate surveys: a student survey, a parent survey, and a teacher survey.
Why are these surveys being administered?
Please reference the 2022-2023 Accountability Manual for the Annual School and District Report Card System for South Carolina Public Schools and School Districts which specifies usage of Climate Survey responses in calculating School Report Card metrics.
Do district personnel have access to the responses of School Climate surveys? How do I know if the surveys are complete?
No, districts do not have access to School Climate survey responses. There is a Category Completion Report that may be helpful at the school level, but using it is optional. This report displays the submission status for all surveys within a category (such as SCDE – School Climate) for students or teachers. Running a Category Completion report does not reveal response data to schools or districts, only counts of the number of surveys completed thus far. At the school level, this report will only pull in active teachers; note that at the District level the Category Completion Report will pull in all students or teachers regardless of active/not active status. For PowerSchool's most current documentation on the Category Completion Report, please see this article titled Ecollect Forms: Reporting: Category Completion Report, which is available to PowerSchool tech contacts using their PowerSchool Community login.
How many responses are accepted for each survey?
Only one response is accepted for a given survey. For teacher respondents who provide instruction at multiple schools, remember that this means one response for a given survey for a given school. Teachers should select the school for which the current survey responses should be associated if providing instruction at multiple schools. Note that any parent/guardian/family member with Parent Portal access associated with a student may respond to the parent survey, but only one response per student will be accepted. Parents of pre-K students do not need to respond to the parent survey.
Will parent surveys be used in the School Climate rating calculation for school report cards?
No, parent surveys will not be used in this calculation (unlike student and teacher surveys), and parent participation is not used in school report card calculations. Parent responses from only three questions on the survey may be displayed on the report card.
Who can I reach out to for technical assistance with Ecollect surveys?
To report echnical issues and request support related to Ecollect during this survey administration window, district technical contacts should open a ticket at https://www.powerschool.com/support/.
Here are some steps that can be taken to submit a PowerSchool support case for an Ecollect issue:
- Go to the PowerSchool Case Portal and log in: https://help.powerschool.com/t5/Case-Portal/ct-p/Support-CasePortal
- Click the "New Case" button.
- From the "Product" dropdown, select Ecollect Forms
- Type anything in the field below that; then wait a second until the "Continue to Case Creation" button appears (if necessary, click the magnifying glass search icon to make that button appear at the bottom of the page).
- Click the "Continue to Case Creation" button.
- In the "Account" field, select your district's account.
- In the "Subject" field, type a subject such as: Ecollect forms - SC school district issue
- In the "Product" field, select Ecollect Forms
- In the "Priority" field, select the most appropriate category for the given issue.
- In the "Business Impact" field, select Business Critical
- In the "Description" field, describe your issue providing as much detail as possible, including screenshots to clarify the issue.
- Send your Support Case number to the SCDE Data Collection Team so that we can escalate any issues having to do with Ecollect forms for the duration of the School Climate Survey window.
- When a PowerSchool agent reaches out to assist you, work with them to resolve your issue.
What changes should we expect for the administration of this year’s School Climate surveys when compared with previous years?
There are no changes in the way that the surveys are administered for the 2022-23 school year. Two questions that were inadvertently left off the Teacher Survey have been added back to the survey for 2022-23. Some questions have been moved.
The following guidelines still apply:
- Results of the student and teacher surveys will be used to calculate a School Climate indicator for use in each school’s report card rating.
- All students in grades 3 through 12 complete the student survey. Only responses from students who have been continuously enrolled in the school from the 45th day of the school year to the completion date of the survey are included in the School Climate indicator calculations. Responses from students completing a survey but leaving the school before the survey completion date will be included as well.
- Only responses from teachers who have been continuously employed in the school from the 45th day of the school year to the completion date of the survey are included in the School Climate indicator calculations. Responses from teachers completing a survey but leaving the school before the survey completion date will be included as well.
- All families of public school students may complete one parent survey for each of their students. Only one survey per family should be completed per student. Parents of students in any grade may complete a survey. Parents of pre-K students do not need to respond to the parent survey.
- Following ESSA guidelines, School Climate indicator results will be available by subgroup in the report card portal under “Download Data.”
- All questions/statements must have a response. For those questions/statements not applicable or the respondent has no opinion, the response “No Answer” should be selected.
Will SCDE provide schools with anonymous teacher and student survey responses?
Yes, the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) provides anonymous teacher and student survey result reports to schools using responses from all teachers and students, not just those in continuous employment/enrollment. (Parent Survey results are also provided to schools.)
Who completes the teacher survey?
All teachers, librarians, guidance counselors, ROTC instructors, and speech therapists employed at the school should complete the teacher survey. The responses from those individuals who have been employed continuously at the school from the 45th day of the school year to the date on which they completed a survey will be included in the School Climate rating for the school.
Part-time teachers may complete a survey for a school if they are on campus or virtually present at that school for at least half of each school day or week (FTE in a teaching position =.5 or more).
As defined in the 2022-2023 Accountability Manual “For the purposes of the School Climate indicator, teachers are defined as professional certified staff (PCS) eligible to receive teacher supply monies per the most current code list posted at https://ed.sc.gov/finance/financial-services/pcs-information/ ”.
Individuals with the following position codes should complete a survey:
03 – Special Education (Itinerant) Teachers
04 – Prekindergarten (Child Development) Teachers
05 – Kindergarten Teachers
06 – Special Education (Self-Contained) Teachers
07 – Special Education (Resource) Teachers
08 – Classroom Teachers
09 – Retired Teachers
10 – Library Media Specialists/School Librarians
11 – Guidance Counselors
17 – Speech Therapists
18 – ROTC Instructors
23 – In-school Career Specialists
How do teachers access the survey?
The survey may be completed using any computer with PowerSchool Teacher Portal access. If a teacher provides instruction at multiple schools within a district, ensure they understand to select each school separately if/when completing a survey for each.
The section of the “Accessing Ecollect Forms” document that is applicable to teachers for the teacher school climate survey is the Teacher Portal section called “Accessing staff forms through the browser.”
The steps are also listed here below:
- Navigate to your Teacher Portal login page (Do NOT go through Teacher Portal Pro).
- Enter your username and password to log into your Teacher Portal account. Contact your district PowerSchool administrator if you do not have a Teacher Portal account.
- Select the school for which the current survey response should be associated. If you provide instruction at multiple schools, you may submit a separate response for each school listed.
- Select “Forms” from the left-hand navigation bar. Links may look different depending on your Student Information System.
- Select the “Other Forms” tab.
- Click on the form title “2023 School Climate Survey - TEACHER” to open the correct form for this year.
- Complete the necessary information and click the “Submit” button. If your response was successfully submitted, you should see a success message that displays a check mark and “Thank You!”
- Repeat steps 3-7 if you provide instruction at multiple schools and wish to complete the teacher survey for a different school listed in the dropdown (see step 3), making sure to select the relevant school.
