Giving Compass' Take:

• According to Education Dive, a new text app called "Possip" is helping schools bridge the communication gap with parents by sending out weekly feedback surveys.

• What other tools can schools use to receive feedback from parents and guardians? What are the downsides for using technology in this manner — does the personal touch get lost?

· Read more about how children gain confidence in seeing parents more engaged with their education.

Whether it’s parent-teacher conference time, a grading issue or a new school policy, word tends to get around among the families at a school. But administrators might not always hear what parents have to say — both positive and negative.

That’s the communication gap that a new online tool called “Possip” — short for positive gossip — is trying to address. The platform allows principals to send out weekly requests for feedback, just a short survey in the form of a text message.

“It's helped us to identify when a family feels frustrated by specific assignments,” Charlie Friedman, the founder and head of school at Nashville Classical Charter School, said in an email. While parents and teachers often sit down together during fall conferences, Friedman says he can use the system to follow up and see if parents have additional questions. He added that he’s also learned that report cards are “a sensitive time of year for families.”

At the same time, the tool has helped him identify the good things teachers are doing to build connections with families, such as sending notes home, making phone calls or even attending students’ Sunday soccer games. “Now they become best practices,” he said. “We can thank our teachers and we can share what they’ve done.”

As with student test data, which is sometimes released too late in the school year for teachers to make any adjustments in their instruction — input from parents, in the form of annual surveys, might not make it to school leaders in timely way. A mild concern shared among parents at morning drop off or posted in a Facebook group might escalate into a full-blown problem before principals know about it.

Read the full article about a new survey tool for schools by Linda Jacobson at Education Dive.