Last month, Education Next released additional findings from their 2016 EdNext Poll, a national public opinion survey conducted from May 6 to June 13 of last year. The newly released data focus on parents’ satisfaction with various features of the schools their children attend, such as teacher quality, school discipline, and safety. More specifically, the analysis compares parents’ responses by school sector—traditional public, private, and charter schools—to look for differences in the satisfaction among parents nationwide, making it the first of its kind to do so across all three sectors.
The results reveal that charter school parents tend to be more satisfied with most aspects of their schools than traditional district school parents, yet less satisfied than private school parents. This trend was evident in matters such as teacher quality, school discipline, safety, teaching of values, and achievement expectations for students. On average, charter school parents reported being more satisfied than district school parents in these five categories by 13 percentage points and less satisfied than private school parents by an average of 12 percentage points.
When asked about problems in their children’s schools, few parents reported seeing any major shortcomings. The issue that received the most amount of concern was a lack of extracurricular activities, which nearly 47 percent of charter school parents deemed to be a serious problem, compared to 33 percent of district school parents and 24 percent of private school parents. Charter school parents also reported reaching out to their school staff more than district and private school parents in areas such as their kids’ achievements, homework, and teacher quality.
The survey confirms the general perception that parents are typically happier with their child’s school when they are able to choose it. And the survey’s results are particularly interesting and valuable for the fast-growing charter school sector that relies on parents’ choice and satisfaction to further their expansion and impact. The findings indicate that such schools would benefit from better locations, facilities, and extracurricular activities—but that, of course, assumes they have the money to do so, which is unfortunately rarely the case. Therefore, it might behoove policymakers to listen to these moms and dads and close the charter-district funding gap.
SOURCE: Samuel Barrows, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, “What Do Parents Think of Their Children’s Schools?,” Education Next (December 2016).
