Minnesota PK-12 Distance Learning Survey

As the state’s land grant institution, The University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) saw a responsibility to gain feedback from the educators who were tasked with implementing distance learning to inform the University on how the College of Education and Human Development may be helpful in providing supports to PK-12 schools and share that feedback with the state as a whole. Dr. Kim Gibbons, Director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, and Dr. Katie Pekel from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development led a team of collaborators from inside and outside the University to execute a survey to seek that feedback. This report is a summary of those findings.

More than 13,000 educator respondents from across the state completed the survey between May 27 and June 28, 2020. The quantitative and qualitative data informed key findings related to the importance of relationships and technology, educator worries, and significant lessons learned during PK-12 distance learning in Minnesota.

Qualitative Data Supplements

The 15,377 comments respondents provided as part of the Minnesota PK-12 Distance Learning Survey were informative, powerful, and moving. Given the honesty and vulnerability with which educators wrote, we felt it was important to make the comments for all of the open ended questions available. Due to the volume of comments, we have separated these into four supplementary documents, one for each question. Comments were edited to eliminate identifying information (e.g., where the respondent worked) and anything that could be construed as personally disparaging to an individual, though there were very few of those comments.

Regional Reports

Minnesota's school districts are grouped into nine geographical regions. We have generated regional-level reports for each of these regions, plus a tenth focused on the state's charter schools. These reports present the same data as the statewide report linked above, but are formatted differently. We have included a version of the statewide report formatted in the same way as the regional reports for your reference.