Parents Matter: Building Parent Survey Participation in Georgia
Episode 71
Release Date: January 8, 2026
Guests: Dominique Donaldson and Carol Sprague, Georgia Department of Education
Among stakeholder groups, parents occupy a place of special significance. To increase communication and collaboration with the parents and families of students with disabilities, the Georgia Department of Education is taking steps to build parent survey participation and representativeness. How are they doing so? And what are the results so far? Join host Amy Bitterman and her special guests Dominique Donaldson and Carol Sprague to learn more about how Georgia is using data-driven decision making to strengthen the involvement of this all-important stakeholder group.
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Episode Transcript
00:00:04.25 AMY BITTERMAN: For the IDEA Data Center, I'm Amy Bitterman, and this is A Date With Data. Every month I sit down with data quality influencers from around the country to share their stories about special education data and the work they do to improve outcomes for children with disabilities.
00:00:21.49 Welcome to A Date With Data. I am your host, Amy Bitterman, and today we’re exploring how one state is strengthening their parent survey participation and representativeness through collaboration and capacity building. I am joined by Dominique Donaldson and Carol Sprague from the Georgia Department of Education. Welcome to both of you.
00:00:44.17 DOMINIQUE DONALDSON: Thank you.
00:00:45.17 CAROL SPRAGUE: Thank you.
00:00:45.81 DOMINIQUE DONALDSON: So much for having us, Amy.
00:00:48.52 AMY BITTERMAN: Delighted for you to be here. Dominique, can you start off by saying a little bit about your role at the department?
00:00:54.93 DOMINIQUE DONALDSON: My name is Dominique Donaldson, and I am one of two Part B data managers here at the Georgia Department of Education. We work collaboratively with other units in GaDOE—the Georgia Department of Education—to make sure that we are submitting, analyzing, and reviewing valid and reliable student data for students with disabilities.
00:01:26.58 AMY BITTERMAN: Thank you. Carol?
00:01:28.96 CAROL SPRAGUE: Hi. Thank you, Amy. I'm Carol Sprague, the other Part B Data Manager for the state of Georgia. Like Dominique said, we help with the data collection, the SPP-APR, and data visualizations.
00:01:46.33 AMY BITTERMAN: Wonderful. All right, to kick things off, can you talk a little bit about why you decided to have this focus on the parent survey for Indicator 8? What was the impetus for this work?
00:01:59.49 DOMINIQUE DONALDSON: Georgia reviews and analyzes parent survey data annually. We look at what was done successfully, identify new opportunities for growth, and through the completion of the SPP-APR, we identified an additional opportunity to improve our response rate and representativeness...