Districts Use Web Polls to Survey Parents on Hot Topics is an article in Education Week about schools using online polling tools.

There are obviously a lot of concerns with doing something like this, not least of which being many families can’t afford computers or Internet access. Some school officials raise those concerns within the article, and say that’s why they use multi-lingual phone polling, too.

When I was a community organizer, we used to say the only reason to do a survey or poll was to have an excuse to engage in a conversation. Because of the belief, I’m very wary of schools making any kinds of decisions based on surveys — online or by phone. People are generally restricted to the multiple choice answers provided, and you can’t really determine how strongly people feel about a topic — some will say what they think they should say and not what they really think. You also can’t identify a person’s leadership potential or their social network, and you can’t develop a relationship with them through a survey, either.

I hope online polling doesn’t doesn’t make schools feel like they are really doing anything to engage parents.  It’s just another form of one-way communication, and not the two-way conversation, schools need to have with families.

Online polling could have a small place in the scheme of things, but, if I were a school administrator, I wouldn’t place a whole lot of confidence in it.