Parents and guardians are key partners in any school’s work to support student well-being. To better understand parents’ expectations and needs, this report draws on results from the Parent Resilience Survey (PRS), a survey instrument administered by Authentic Connections (AC). The analysis includes data collected annually from 2021–2022 through 2024–2025. This analysis is intended to help schools assess how their efforts are experienced at home, whether families have bought into the school’s program, what their concerns are, and what would make their experience better.
The main goal of the Parent Resilience Survey is to determine how parent perceptions of school life are linked to two critical outcomes: school loyalty and perception of their children's mental health. Findings on these two outcomes are included in Section 1, including the trends from the past four years and 2024–2025 results by parent and child demographics.
Section 2 includes the analysis of the modifiable school-level factors that can increase parents’ likelihood to recommend the child’s school to other families and improve parents’ perceptions of their children’s mental health.
In addition to the quantitative portions of the PRS, parents also identified specific strengths at the school, areas of improvement, and worries, which are reproduced in their own words in Section 3 so that school leaders can better understand parental input.
According to data collected in the PRS, parents’ views of school life have improved over the past four years, but real gaps remain between families of different ethnicities, between parents of children with different gender identities, and across grade levels. The report concludes with recommendations to help schools improve families’ experiences.
Sections include:
- Findings at a Glance
- Key Findings
- Summary and Recommendations
- PRS Methodology
- Participants
Full Report
- NAIS Research: 2026 Parent Perceptions of School Climate Report (PDF; member login required)
Quick View
Quick Views are high-level summaries showcasing key data points. They designed to serve as a quick reference point before diving deeper into the full analysis.