Lifewise Academy has completed and released an educators' survey for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years. This survey asks six questions about Lifewise's interactions within the school. It's very simple. The 2023 and 2024 surveys have identical results for the main question, "In general, my school and students benefit from LifeWise Academy." 

The survey questions.

The odds of this survey having the same results two years in a row seem very unlikely. The 2024 survey is posted on the Lifewise website without the neutral results. Lifewise decided to take the neutral answers and change them to "agree" that Lifewise is a benefit to the school. Lifewise has not been truthful about students missing classes, about the fact that released-time is "right", and that Lifewise improves an entire school's attendance and academic performance. It's not surprising that Lifewise would also lie or make up data for a survey like this.

Goofy results, maybe using copy/paste to create reports, and changing results are not the point of this article. 

Lifewise Academy uses these survey results to convince legislators, the public, and other school districts that teachers support Lifewise and its school integration. This couldn't be further from the truth, and there is no data to suggest that teachers think Lifewise benefits the school in a large capacity. As of April 2024, Lifewise Academy was in 394 schools when the survey was sent out. These 394 schools employed 10,582 teachers according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This does not count administration and other staff who often receive the surveys. Only 769 educators responded. That is on average less than two people per school. Of those 769, only 584 agreed Lifewise was a benefit. That is one person per school who responded and agreed that Lifewise was a benefit. This is only 5% of teachers, and even less if you count all education staff at the schools.

Parents, teachers, and school administration need to understand that there is no overwhelming support for students being removed from school to attend Lifewise. The marketing and promotional materials Lifewise creates would make the public think otherwise. Public schools should not compete with religious instruction when deciding on students' class schedules.