The ultimate goal of HSSSE is to document, describe, and monitor student engagement in educationally purposeful activities in secondary schools nationally. HSSSE provides information that can be used to stimulate discussions on teaching and learning and guide student improvement activities.

HSSSE is a powerful tool in the assessment arena that can complement performance tests. While the results from standardized performance tests are used to evaluate student (and therefore school) success, that data cannot pinpoint the specific educational processes that are linked to the outcomes the tests measure. HSSSE data can identify student engagement and school features that affect outcomes.

Our primary activity is to conduct an annual survey to assess the extent to which high school students engage in educational practices associated with high levels of learning and development. These data are especially powerful because they pertain to school features that personnel can modify fairly quickly, and often inexpensively, to facilitate student learning. Please click here to see the survey.

Each participating school receives a customized report that includes a brief overview of aggregate findings (click here to see the current Overview). Also, each report contains useful data comparing the individual school's students with all other HSSSE respondents along various dimensions, as well as a CD containing the school's data and other valuable information. See "What will my school receive" for more details regarding deliverables.

HSSSE is quickly becoming one of the largest databases on student engagement in the nation. HSSSE will use survey data in the aggregate for special reports. However, HSSSE will never use data to rank schools or distribute information without consent that identifies schools or school districts in any way.

The HSSSE 2006 report, Voices of Students on Engagement