Parents, the Public and Schools: A Degree of Difference
The Gallup poll says more Americans are more dissatisfied with the quality of education than at any point in the past decade – but what, exactly, are they dissatisfied about?
Some 54 percent of the public says they're "completely" or "somewhat" dissatisfied with K-12 education, up from 45 percent in 2004. Parents, however, are a lot happier, with eight in 10 saying they're either somewhat or completely satisfied with the education their child gets.
A lot of this is no surprise, and in fact it's one of the best-established public opinion trends in education. For years, Americans have given their local schools better grades than public schools nationally, and parents have been happier about schools than the general public. When it comes to public education, familiarity breeds confidence, at least to some degree.
When Public Agenda has asked both parents and the public about their perception of the schools in their own community, the similarities are more striking than the differences. And the differences are often a matter of degree, not of basic perceptions.
For example, when we asked parents and the general public about the most pressing problem facing the high schools in their community, both said "social problems and kids who misbehave" was more important than low academic standards. But 63 percent of parents said this, compared with 56 percent of the public.
When asked to rate local schools, parents are more confident than the public that schools are doing a good job preparing students for college level English (55 percent compared to 46 percent), to be successful adults (53 percent vs. 44 percent), for college math (52 percent vs. 45 percent) and college science (50 percent compared to 44 percent).
Yet when it comes to deciding what's important for students to learn, we found parents and the public wanted the same things (especially when it comes to basic skills). And when given options on how to spend extra education money in their community, parents and the public would spend it the same way.
That's worth remembering as the nation continues to debate how to ensure all kids get a good education: conflict makes the news but there's a lot more consensus out there than you think..
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Overall an interesting survey. I have two comments:
1. I would've liked to see questions regarding Reading and English
2. Double-barrel questions - For example, Q10A asked "Thinking more specifically about your child, do you think that his/her school should be teaching him/her a lot more math and science, less, or are things fine as they are? [Base: Asked of parents with K-12 grade children]". As a parent, what if I thought my child's school taught a sufficient amount of math, but not enough science? This same logic applies to any question where math and science were coupled. It's difficult to make generalizations or interpretations about math or science based on the survey answers for these types of questions.
"Degree of Difference Method
Degree of difference testing, commonly abbreviated DOD, is a discrimination method used to determine if an overall difference exists between test and control products when the product shows inherent variability due to preparation, production time, multiple components, etc. With such variability, traditional 3-AFC and 2-AFC methods1 cannot effectively separate true treatment variability from normal product variability, and therefore can give false results. Examples of heterogeneous products include prepared meals such as soups or entrees, baked goods such as cookies or rolls, and multi-component snack mixes.
An approach utilizing degree of difference (DOD) testing was proposed by Aust, Gacula, Beard, and Washam (1985)2 wherein scaled difference ratings were used to contrast the difference between the control and the test samples to a baseline difference between control lots. Panelists scaled overall difference for three pairs of samples – Control lot 1 (C1) vs. C1, C1 vs. Control lot 2 (C2), and C1 vs. Test (T). The difference between the control and test was then compared to within-lot and between-lot variability of the control to establish if the control-test difference was significant."
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