The SQM framework was developed by UMass Amherst and a consortium of districts together, and it aims to measure school quality in the following categories: Teachers and Leadership, School Culture, Resources, Academic Learning, and Community and Wellbeing.

The results from this survey will help us better understand our strengths and opportunities for improvement. The intent is not to respond to a single data point in isolation, but to recognize how each piece contributes to a broader understanding of student, educator, and family experiences. The results are presented in proximity to a benchmark that was set by focus groups of educators who developed this tool over the last decade, and these benchmarks differ for each indicator, but remain the same for all schools or districts utilizing the survey tool. Results are presented on a 5 point scale with 5 being the highest and 3 being neutral. 

Our goal is to approach the data with an open mind, celebrating the successes that are confirmed in the results while identifying areas to focus our time and energy for our continuous improvement. 

When you access to SQM platform, you will land on an overview page. In the upper right-hand corner, you will find a dropdown menu allowing you to choose which school’s results you would like to see. 

In the box of the School Quality Framework Indicators, you will find a key identifying the level assigned to each subcategory, ranging from warning to ideal. To the right of that, you will be able to toggle between categories based on student and teacher responses and those based on parent responses.

To learn more details about each of the subcategories, you may click on the title. This will bring you to a new page that identifies the measures that contribute to the subcategory score as well as the related questions on each survey.  To continue browsing, you may click on tabs, bring you to the data for each of the categories 

The final heading at the top, Analyze, allows you to access a detailed analysis by category, subcategory, and filter results for multiple student groups. By design, the results dashboard is disaggregated by school only, and there is no district wide data. Based on feedback from districts who developed using the dashboard, a district wide summary will likely be added for the 2025/2026 survey data.