My Kids, Your Kids, Our Kids: What Parents and the Public Want from Schools

2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Jon Valant ◽  
Daniel Newark
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Intervention Program ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Community Schools ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nationally Representative

Background/Context School choice reforms could strengthen parents’ influence on school behaviors, since schools must appeal to parents in order to operate. If parents’ desires for schools differ from the broader public's desires for schools, then schools might pursue different goals and activities in systems emphasizing school choice. One popular hypothesis is that school-choosing parents, more than the public, want schools to prioritize their own students’ private interests over more collective social, economic, and political interests. Purpose/Objective We compare parents’ desires for their own children's schools with the U.S. public's desires for public schools. We make these comparisons with respect to the abstract goals that schools pursue, as well as schools’ more tangible behaviors. Population/Participants/Subjects We administered an online survey to nationally representative samples of parents and adults. We administered a second online survey to a national sample of adults. Intervention/Program/Practice The article consists of two studies. Study 1 compares parents’ and the public's beliefs about which abstract goals schools should prioritize. Respondents were randomly assigned to consider either schools in their community, schools around the country, or, if they had children, their own children's schools. They chose from goals that prioritized their students’ professional achievement (“Private Success”), the economy's needs (“Shared Economic Health”), and more collective social and political needs (“Democratic Character”). Study 2 compares parents’ and the public's beliefs about how schools should actually behave. Respondents were randomly assigned to consider either schools in their community, schools around the country, or their own children's schools. We asked about the basic structure and content of the school day, how schools should teach, and how to evaluate school performance. Research Design The studies consist of randomized experiments and related statistical analysis. Findings/Results We find remarkably little difference between parents’ desires for their children's schools and the public's desires for public schools. This is true both for the abstract goals that schools pursue and for schools’ more tangible behaviors. Conclusions/Recommendations Our findings suggest that the hypothesis that parents want schools to focus on their students’ private success at the expense of more collective goals is over-simplified. It may be, for example, that parents want their children to be well rounded in ways that also serve more collective social, political, and economic interests. We observe divisions in Americans’ views of the goals that schools should pursue, but these divisions are more connected to their political affiliation than parent status (with Republicans more focused than Democrats on Private Success).

scholarly journals The 50th Annual PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

2018 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. NP1-NP24 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
National Sample ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Internet Service ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Annual Survey ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Metal Detectors

The 2018 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools finds that Americans trust and support teachers, but they draw the line at wanting their own children to join a profession they see as undervalued and low-paid. An overwhelming 78% of public school parents say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike for more pay. The 2018 poll also revealed that Americans lack strong confidence that schools can protect their children against a school shooting, but they favor arming police, expanding mental health screenings, and using metal detectors at school entrances over arming teachers. The poll also asked Americans about reforming the existing school system, spending to provide extra support to students with greater needs, comparing education today to education during earlier years, evaluating opportunities and expectations for various groups of children, affording college, valuing a college degree, changing school hours, and grading the schools. The lack of funding was identified as the biggest problem facing the local schools, the 19th consecutive year for such a result. The 2018 poll is PDK’s 50th annual survey. Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., produced this year’s poll using a random, representative, national sample of 1,042 adults with an oversample to 515 parents of school-age children. Sampling and data collection were provided by GfK Custom Research via its nationally representative, probability-based online KnowledgePanel®, in which participants are randomly recruited via address-based sampling to participate in survey research projects by responding to questionnaires online. Households without internet connections are provided with a web-enabled device and free internet service.

Misrepresenting Brown: Are Ohio Schools Lost in the Free Market? General Implications for Urban Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 1203-1223
Author(s):  
Jane Beese ◽  
Jennifer Martin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Education ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Minority Student ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Community Schools ◽  
Virtual School ◽  
Traditional Public Schools

The privatization of public funds for education through school choice programs has fueled the expansion of virtual online charter schools. This redirection of funds contributes to the idea that virtual school success is comparable or even superior to the performance of traditional public schools. The schools most adversely affected are the schools with the highest need, those serving children living in poverty and already underserved minority student populations: urban public schools. The purpose of this article is to investigate the performance of virtual schools and the redistribution of public monies from public to online community schools in Ohio.

scholarly journals What the Public Think about Social Services: A Report from Scotland

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1146-1166
Author(s):  
Trish McCulloch ◽  
Stephen Webb
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Two Stages

Abstract This article reports on findings of a government-funded research project which set out to understand what the public think about social services in Scotland. The authors were particularly keen to examine issues of legitimacy, trust and licence to operate for social services as they are framed in public perceptions. Drawing on a national online survey of 2,505 nationally representative adults, the findings provide the first and largest empirical data set on public perceptions of social services in Scotland. Data analysis occurred in two stages and employed descriptive statistical measurement and cross-tabulation analysis. The findings indicate that, overall, people in Scotland are positive about social services and the value of their impact on society. Furthermore, they believe that social services perform a valuable public role. These findings are significant for debates surrounding social services and suggest that the Scottish public has a more positive view of social services than social service workers and welfare institutions typically perceive. The findings demonstrate the need to develop a more theoretically rich understanding of the relationships between public perception, legitimacy and social licence in social services, including attention to co-productive models of engagement.

Status, Growth, and Perceptions of School Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 016237372110305
Author(s):  
David M. Houston ◽  
Michael Henderson ◽  
Paul E. Peterson ◽  
Martin R. West
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Achievement Growth ◽  
Status Information ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Perceptions Of School

States and districts are increasingly incorporating measures of achievement growth into their school accountability systems, but there is little research on how these changes affect the public’s perceptions of school quality. We conduct a nationally representative online survey experiment to identify the effects of providing participants with information about their local public schools’ average achievement status and/or average achievement growth. Prior to receiving any information, participants already possess a modest understanding of how their local schools perform in terms of status, but they are largely unaware of how these schools perform in terms of growth. Participants who live in higher status districts tend to grade their local schools more favorably. The provision of status information does not fundamentally change this relationship. The provision of growth information, however, alters Americans’ views about local educational performance. Once informed, participants’ evaluations of their local schools better reflect the variation in district growth.

Making public education popular

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Russell Arben Fox
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Community Schools ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Ideal

Michael J. Apple$quoteright$s book constitutes, among many other things, an ambitious rethinking of what will be necessary to make the ideal of egalitarian public schooling more appealing to those parents who have, in recent years, found their beliefs and criticisms most readily responded to by various `conservative modernizers' and other enemies of public education. Rather than treating all those who make attacks on public schooling in the same way, Apple proposes that educators develop ways to alter the structure of public schools so as to draw in the support of at least some of their critics, particularly those whose criticisms arise from concerns about the perceived opposition between public schooling and religious and parental authority. The question then becomes how to accommodate such charter and community schools within the public education ideal.

scholarly journals Institutional Arrangements and the Creation of Social Capital: The Effects of Public School Choice

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schneider ◽  
Paul Teske ◽  
Melissa Marschall ◽  
Michael Mintrom ◽  
Christine Roch
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Parental Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public School Choice ◽  
Quasi Experimental

While the possible decline in the level of social capital in the United States has received considerable attention by scholars such as Putnam and Fukuyama, less attention has been paid to the local activities of citizens that help define a nation's stock of social capital. Scholars have paid even less attention to how institutional arrangements affect levels of social capital. We argue that giving parents greater choice over the public schools their children attend creates incentives for parents as “citizen/consumers” to engage in activities that build social capital. Our empirical analysis employs a quasi-experimental approach comparing parental behavior in two pairs of demographically similar school districts that vary on the degree of parental choice over the schools their children attend. Our data show that, controlling for many other factors, parents who choose when given the opportunity are higher on all the indicators of social capital analyzed. Fukuyama has argued that it is easier for governments to decrease social capital than to increase it. We argue, however, that the design of government institutions can create incentives for individuals to engage in activities that increase social capital.

A Historical and Political Look at the Modern School Choice Movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Stephanie R. Logan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Schools ◽  
Modern School ◽  
Brown Decision

School choice in the United States can be traced back to the start of civil society when wealthy families selected a school based on educational philosophy, location, or religious tradition. As common schools emerged, larger portions of the population were able to gain access to education. However, many discovered that quality public schools were not a reality for all students. In response, some looked to school choices within and outside of the public school sector. This literature review chronicles school choice efforts to emerge following the 1954 Brown decision and highlights liberal and conservative political heritages of school choice in the United States.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Catholic Schooling

The introduction sets up the problem public officials faced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How should they, and the public schools they administered, respond to rapidly increasing attendance in private, Catholic schools? How, in a nation seemingly committed to mass public education, did private, Catholic schooling expand? In the broader economic language popular both at the time and today, how did educational competition and markets emerge in the twentieth century given the strong support for a public school monopoly a century earlier? The book’s central argument is that the structures that enable school choice to flourish today owe their origins—over a century ago—as much to public policy as to private initiative.

scholarly journals Factors influencing teachers’ job satisfaction in the Pakistan's public school

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Saira Bibi ◽  
Usama Kalim
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Public School ◽  
Private Schools ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Average Score ◽  
Large Sample Size ◽  
The Public

This study examined the job satisfaction level of teachers and the factors affecting job satisfaction in the public schools of Pakistan. The public-school teachers from the two districts were selected as the sample for this study. The questionnaire was used for the data collection. An online survey was conducted to collect data from the teachers at selected public schools in Pakistan. The respondent was approached individually through an online survey. A total of 119 responses were received through an online survey. Out of these 119, 58 were complete responses which were then used for analysis. The SPSS and AMOS software was used for the analysis purpose. The average score related to teacher satisfaction showed that teachers in Pakistan are generally satisfied with their jobs. The Structural Equation Modeling results showed that professional development opportunities at work and self-efficacy play a significant positive role in teacher job satisfaction. The teachers who were well skilled and had better planning related to the work and provided progress in their work tend to be more satisfied with their jobs compared to the teachers who have low self-efficacy and dispatch progress on their job. Only a few public schools in Pakistan are included in the study. As a result, a broad sample of schools is recommended for future research. This poll did not include private schools. As a result, private schools should be included in future polls to better understand the disparities in teacher conduct in various school environments. Due to the closure of schools in Pakistan, the online survey was the only choice, explaining why there were so few complete responses. To corroborate the findings of this study, it is suggested that future investigations use a large sample size.

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