California Healthy Kids Survey

The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) is a comprehensive and confidential youth self-report data collection system that provides essential and reliable health risk assessment information to schools, districts, and communities. It provides a comprehensive, data-driven, decision-making process to guide efforts to improve school climate, learning supports, and engagement, as well as identify and increase the quality of health, prevention, and youth development programs. The real value of the CHKS is harnessed when the data is used as a catalyst for positive change within schools and communities.

At the heart of the CHKS is a broad range of key learning and health-related indicators that are used to collect student data on attitudes, behaviors, and experiences related to school and learning. School connectedness, developmental supports and opportunities, safety, violence and harassment, substance use, and physical and mental health are some of the key areas assessed by the survey.

Research studies and reviews over the past decade have consistently concluded that student health status and academic achievement are inextricably intertwined. The CHKS provides data to assess and monitor the health-risk and problem behaviors that research has identified as important barriers to learning, particularly those related to school climate.

In the Miller Creek School District, the CHKS is administered every other year to 5th and 7th graders.