Purpose

Through years of research, Gallup discovered three true indicators of student success; hope, engagement, and wellbeing. These three key factors drive students' grades, achievement scores, retention, and future employment.

Hope: the ideas and energy we have for the future. Hope drives attendance, credits earned, and GPA of high school students. Hope scores are more robust predictors of college success than are high school GPA, SAT, and ACT scores.

Engagement: the involvement in and enthusiasm for school. Engagement distinguishes between high-performing and low-performing schools.

Wellbeing: how we think about and experience our lives. Wellbeing tells us how our students are doing today and predicts their success in the future.

By measuring students' hope, engagement, and wellbeing, the Gallup Student Poll will help create a more hopeful story about American education in which students and teachers get to do what they do best every day, students' wellbeing and success matter to the community, and their personal flourishing leads to school success.

The survey itself takes less than 10 minutes to complete. In addition to several demographic questions (age, grade, gender, etc.), students are asked 20 core questions about what they do, how they think, and how they feel about their home, school, and community life. The following questions are examples that the survey intends to answer about America's students.

• Do your teachers make you feel your schoolwork is important?
• Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?
• Can you find lots of ways around any problem?
• Do you energetically pursue your goals?

All data collected by the Gallup Student Poll is stored, aggregated, and analyzed by Gallup. Under no circumstances will Gallup reveal a student's individual responses to anyone.

Armed with this new and ongoing research, parents, school districts, communities, states, and the nation can pursue student success goals with proven and actionable data that can lead to significant improvements.