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.

scholarly journals Determinants of School Choice: Evidence from Rural Punjab, Pakistan

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamna Ahmed ◽  
Sahar Amjad Sheikh
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Private School ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
Private Schooling ◽  
Research Initiative ◽  
Rich Information ◽  
Perceptions Of School

The objective of this study is to understand why parents in rural areas of Punjab, Pakistan, choose to send their children to private schools when free public schools are available. The study utilizes the Privatization in Education Research Initiative (PERI) school choice dataset compiled by the Lahore School of Economics in collaboration with the Punjab Bureau of Statistics. These data provide rich information on parents’ perception of their child’s school relative to alternative schools he or she could have attended. The findings suggest that parents’ perceptions play an important role in school choice. In particular, their perceptions of school quality and employment opportunities emerge as key determinants of private school choice. Additionally, expenditure on and access to private schooling relative to public schooling as well as the socioeconomic status of the household have a significant impact on parents’ probability of choosing a private school for their child.

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 Word on the Street or the Number from the State? Government-Provided Information and Americans’ Opinions of Schools

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 674-692
Author(s):  
Jon Valant ◽  
Daniel A Newark
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
State Government ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Effective Decision Making

Abstract Public institutions seeking to facilitate effective decision making by boundedly rational constituents often must determine what information to provide and in what form to provide it. Ideally, this determination would reflect an understanding of how different kinds, forms, and sources of information are processed by constituents and influence constituents’ beliefs. However, research on this topic—especially in the context of educational institutions, and with a focus on official numerical information versus electronic word of mouth—has been minimal. Considering the case of state governments wishing to inform citizens about their schools, we examine how parents and the US public evaluate schools after receiving two increasingly abundant kinds of school quality information: numerical government ratings and online parent comments. Using an online survey experiment with a nationally representative sample, we find that perceptions of school quality are heavily influenced by parent comments even when these comments appear alongside official ratings. By contrast, the effects of official numerical ratings appear modest. Additional findings suggest that the comments’ influence results from preferences for the information’s source (parents over government) and style (narrative over numerical), and that nonprofit organizations are more trusted messengers of performance information than state governments. These results advance our theoretical understanding of the effects of different kinds of information on belief, and we conclude the article by discussing their implications for how public institutions disseminate information to their constituents.

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.

scholarly journals Neglecting democracy in education policy: A-F school report card accountability systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Murray ◽  
Kenneth R. Howe
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Report Card ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
Letter Grades ◽  
Democracy In Education

Sixteen states have adopted school report card accountability systems that assign A-F letter grades to schools. Other states are now engaged in deliberation about whether they, too, should adopt such systems. This paper examines A-F accountability systems with respect to three kinds of validity. First, it examines whether or not these accountability systems are valid as a measure, that is, do these systems validly measure school quality? Second, it examines whether or not they are valid as a policy instrument. or, how far do A-F accountability systems fulfill the stated aims of their proponents—empowering parents, providing “simple” and “common sense” measures of educational quality, and so on? Finally, it examines whether or not A-F systems are valid as a democratic framework:, how well do these systems align with the broader goals of educating students for democratic citizenship and of incorporating parents and community members in democratic deliberation about policies for their public schools? The paper concludes that A-F accountability systems are invalid along each of these lines, and provides recommendations for democratically developing and implementing criteria for school assessment.

Speech-Language Pathologists' Perceptions of School-Based Services for Children With Hearing Loss

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 469-478
Author(s):  
Sarah Allen ◽  
Robert Mayo
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
School Based ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Positive Feelings ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss ◽  
Perceptions Of School

Purpose School-aged children with hearing loss are best served by a multidisciplinary team of professionals. The purpose of this research was to assess school-based speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) perceptions of their access to, involvement of, and working relationships with educational audiologists in their current work setting. Method An online survey was developed and distributed to school-based SLPs in North Carolina. Results A significant difference in access to and involvement of educational audiologists across the state was found. Conclusions This research contributes to professional knowledge by providing information about current perceptions in the field about interprofessional practice in a school-based setting. Overall, SLPs reported positive feelings about their working relationship with educational audiologists and feel the workload is distributed fairly.

Occupying Schools, Occupying Land

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tarlau
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Leadership Development ◽  
Technical Knowledge ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Collective Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
Landless Workers Movement ◽  
Progressive Organizations

Contrary to the conventional belief that social movements cannot engage the state without becoming co-opted and demobilized, this study shows how movements can advance their struggles by strategically working with, in, through, and outside of state institutions. The success of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) in occupying land, winning land rights, and developing alternative economic enterprises for over a million landless workers has made it an inspiration for progressive organizations globally. The MST’s educational initiatives, which are less well known but equally as important, teach students about participatory democracy, collective work, agroecological farming, and other practices that support its socialist vision. This study details how MST activists have pressured municipalities, states, and the federal government to implement their educational proposal in public schools and universities, affecting hundreds of thousands of students. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land documents the potentials, constraints, failures, and contradictions of the MST’s educational struggle. A major lesson is that participating in the contentious co-governance of public education can help movements recruit new activists, diversify their membership, increase practical and technical knowledge, and garner political power. Activists are most effective when combining disruption, persuasion, negotiation, and co-governance into their tactical repertoires. Through expansive leadership development, the MST implemented its educational program in local schools, even under conservative governments. Such gains demonstrate the potential of schools as sites for activists to prefigure, enact, and develop the social and economic practices they hope to use in the future.

scholarly journals Politics of Nostalgia and Populism: Evidence from Turkey

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ezgi Elçi
Keyword(s):  
Direct Effect ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Party Preference ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article scrutinizes the relationship between collective nostalgia and populism. Different populist figures utilize nostalgia by referring to their country's ‘good old’ glorious days and exploiting resentment of the elites and establishment. Populists instrumentalize nostalgia in order to create their populist heartland, which is a retrospectively constructed utopia based on an abandoned but undead past. Using two original datasets from Turkey, this study first analyzes whether collective nostalgia characterizes populist attitudes of the electorate. The results illustrate that collective nostalgia has a significantly positive relationship with populist attitudes even after controlling for various independent variables, including religiosity, partisanship, satisfaction with life and Euroscepticism. Secondly, the study tests whether nostalgic messages affect populist attitudes using an online survey experiment. The results indicate that Ottoman nostalgia helps increase populist attitudes. Kemalist nostalgia, however, has a weak direct effect on populist attitudes that disappears after controlling for party preference.

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