On Demand
Open Phones: Too Satisfied?
What does it mean when 90% of parents are satisfied with their child's education -- but only half are reading at grade level? Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development, discusses this statistic. Plus, we open up the phones: Are we asking too little of public education?
Listen to last week's Aspen Ideas Festival panel on workforce training and education
- About the Brian Lehrer Show »
- Staff Bios »
- Contact Us »
- Tapes and Transcripts »
- Latest Episode »
- Show Archive »
Features & Series
Podcast
Stay up to date.
Subscribe to the Podcast
YOU PRODUCE The Brian Lehrer Show
Be a listener-producer with facts, questions and people you'd like to hear on the air.
More
The Brian Lehrer Show Scrapbook
Visit the scrapbook for daily photos and miscellany from The Brian Lehrer Show.
More
Shop at Amazon!
The Brian Lehrer Show picks
Start your Amazon shopping on WNYC.org and a portion of your total purchase goes to WNYC.
More
Comments
but maybe only satisfied parents replied to the survey or had time to reply
400,000 were returned. How many were sent out?
I would like to know where I can send my son to school that is progressive along the lines of the Montessori schools, that you don't have to take a loan out for??
Maybe it means a lot of not-so-well educated adults unaware of the fact that their children are being not-so-well educated? Duh.....
The most amazing thing is that "top high schools" in the US (in very wealthy areas) are just plain lousy.
After 11th grade, I knew more calculus than these AP top students. And it was in a public school, in a small rural town in France (which is low on OECD ratings).
The standardized tests are two-three grades behind.
Question - I'm not clear on whether the 90% that are satisfied are *the same group* that have the poor reading ability.
Couldn't you have group A reporting a 90% satisfaction rate (i.e., the survey respondents), whereas the objective measurement of reading ability may be measuring a different, not necessarily related group?
What if the survey respondents were the more affluent, motivated, involved parents, and the ones with the lower-performing kids didn't care or bother to answer surveys?
In any event, the objective measure is the more newsworthy one, and I agree with your guests that this is appalling; I feel that there has been a tragic lowering of expectations across the board - in short, we're selling our kids short - we are the ones in charge!
Nick
NYC
I grew up in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, in the 1980s, attending IS 74. It was a basic public middle school, and I suppose according to today's standards, not a very good school. But I ended up attending Phillips Exeter Academy and then Syracuse University. My education at a Bronx public school was good, in my opinion, but the reason i excelled was because of my parents' intense interest in my studies, encouraging me to go tot he public library every day, reading more, etc. It's not just about how these public schools educate your kids, people. It's also 100% essential you get involved in giving your kids the extra interests. Don't depend on the schools to do it. It's ridiculous to expect the school to give children their entire education.
In the 1980s, the US moved to emulating the Japanese education system because Japan was a rising economic power. When in Japan last December, I saw a lot written about emulating the Indian education system because of the rise of India. Dissatisfaction with education is directly related to a society's sense of it's own economic security. As our economy declines due to oil prices, we will see a growing emphasis on education to save us -- in other words, it's up to our children to save us.
The statistics are constanly parsed to make the current bureacrats look like their "genius" ideas have triumphed over long
running issues of social inequality that have gotten much worse in the past ten years.
It's a whole lotta money going to the schools which suffer less from these inequities.
People are "satisfied" when their kids get good grades. Perhaps social promotion hasn't been eliminated, but merely gone underground through grade inflation. As a side effect, parents are happier even though their children aren't necessarily learning better.
give um an an interesting book to take home and read (that the kid shows interest in) that might work.
I am surprised that "parent involvement" is only being discussed for a special situation. Parents must be consistently & constantly involved with their child's education. Whether they are doing well or not, it is the parent's responsibility to monitor their child's progress. The schools cannot be held responsible for children who lack parental supervision.
As a High School Principal, it is clear to me that parents and children alike are not sure that if their children do well in the sciences it will guarantee them a ticket to the future. Too many scientists and computer programmers are now 50 years old and have been let go and struggling to make ends meet. How do they assure their children that if they succeed they will be successful in the future?
Teachers probably learn over time that if your liberal with your grading, you get more satisfied parents. Parents get upset when their childrens' grade slip and they place focus less attention on the content of lessons.
the survey is a feel-good tool used by the DOE to look concerned. frankly we need to educate parents to understand what an education REALLY is - not about test scores and passing/credit accumulation, etc. Parents are just so glad their kid gets through school, PERIOD. As a teacher (educator) in NYC public schools I "dumb-down" my material every year to a lower and lower "standard" due to student's inability to sit still and pay attention. They are beating us down. Parents are overwhelmed and under-supported - no wonder they think we are doing such a great job! we are all in survival mode!
hey...we were "encouraged" to be positive on this survey, because last year our school was rated poorly despite being a very decent school. there is a lot of pressure on these schools (as there should be) but the pressure seeps out in different ways. like in these survey results.
I would like to hear from the parents at PS 67 in Brooklyn. Having taught in an after school program htere, I would be shocked to think anyone in that school could be grateful for anything more than getting the kids through the day alive.
Education there is in shambles7
the lesson today is don't have 7 kids....
Doris # 7 above has hit the nail right on the head!!! Good schooling is as much (if not more) dependent on good parenting as it is on the quality of our educational institutions.
Coincidentally - I also went through the public schools in the Bronx (K thru 12, albeit some time ago) & managed to get a superb education BOTH because of the quality of the schooling AND my family's continuous encouragement of the educators in their efforts to educate me ;)
What if the dissatisfaction one feels has more to do with the system than with the school? The class size of my son's school is 30-35 students. He has and IEP and struggles mightily. The school personnel works hard; I can see that. They don't seem to have the time to reach my son. I believe that one factor is class size. The school has a better reputation, than other schools, which is why the class size is too large. Plus the school is working so hard to meet state and federal standards and to improve it's reputation that they are too busy to meet the needs of struggling students. They are focused on the standards and not the students. I am not completely satisfied with the school, but see the bigger picture and would prefer to rate the system than the school. Perhaps others feel the same. I would prefer that my son's school was more student centered and I think that it would be if it weren't so focused on making the grade on the NYCDOE report card.
I've taught in the NYC public schools for the last 6 years at the high school level. I found the comments of the dissastified mother of seven particularly telling. How could she not know that her son was failing? Grades are sent out 6 times a year. From my experience, the students who do very well have very concerned, very involved parents and the students who don't do well have parents who are impossible to reach, don't come to parent-teacher night, etc. I send progress reports out 6 times a year to the homes of students who are in jeopardy failing (which most teachers do) half way through every marking period so that students have the opportunity to "get it together." Parents need to realize that they need to stay involved with their kids all the way through school, not just when they are little. In fact their children need them most when they are 14-20. They may look adult, but they are most certainly not - and if they start to make bad choices, those choices have far greater consequences than when they were little.
Schools get graded in part on student and parent approval, what about being partially graded on parental involvement? Schools can't do it alone.
As a NYC elementary teacher, I would like to add in my "two cents": 1) After having taught both in suburban & urban schools, the lack of urban parents as a whole who genuinely envision/want more for their children than perhaps what they themselves had educationally is something I notice year after year (with exceptions of course). I find myself asking "Why am I pushing so much for Sarah when her parent[s] don't?" I love teaching, but as others posted above, it takes the triangle of home-school-student for success to happen for many students. 2) Mr. Wolcott, (whom I have spoken with personally) is crunching numbers for the Bloomberg/Klein machine; that is his job and he does it well as evidenced by his initial listing of stats. I caution all on blindly believing numbers, given that I've seen state tests dumbed down to make schools/states look good for NCLB. I do not dumb down my teaching. I expect my urban kids to know as much as my suburban kids(in as much as I can do as their teacher for 10 months). However, without truly involved parents who seek more for their children (just as my parents and their parents did, and I went to NYC public schools right through college with much success), I end up feeling frustrated that my urban students will fall farther behind no matter what the tests show they achieved. Parents, teachers and students really need to listen to one another and act together to empower true beneficial change to occur.
I teach at a school that was rated extremely well last year. The major reason why students at my school are successful (which doesn't & shouldn't equate parental satisfaction) is because a large % of their parents are extremely involved. If a single parent works nights & their child is at home along, there is little they can do to guarantee their child is doing h.w.
Many parents are satisfied b/c they have no other options. If your child can't read, whose fault is it? Yours? The school's? The child? Does that mean you should NOT be satisfied with the school?
Dennis Walcott said these surveys will help make schools better, but with 92% satisfaction, where is the motivation to get better? Of the schools that received low ratings last year, what did they do to improve?
We should also question the state test results. I doubt my students this year are smarter than the ones I had last year, yet many went up one level on their math scores. I could be satisfied with their work & my teaching, or I could wonder how the test was written & scored & how that made a difference.
We are not asking too little of public education. Rather, we are expect too little of parents. Americans will buy tons of gadgets for their babies & yet once they hand them to the public schools they expect their role in their child's education to be over.
In those high-achieving countries whose test scores we envy, it's the opposite.
What happened to the parents who couldn't settle for an A- or 99% from their kids? They should apply that kind of pressure and logic to the quality of our schools.
This thread is closed.
Back to Episode