A new poll of parents, commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers and carried out by the independent and respected Hart Associates, finds that American parents do not share Betsy DeVos’s dim views about their public schools. Parents want better public schools, not school choice.
Big takeaways from the parent poll:
· Parents want good neighborhood schools over increased choice of schools
· More investments in traditional public schools, rather than diverting funds to charters/vouchers
· The biggest problems parents have with schools is inadequate funding, too much testing, bigger class size, and lack of support for teachers. DeVos’s agenda is at the bottom of the polling results in every way.
The poll of 1,200 parents of public school students includes African-American parents, Latino parents, and parents in 10 major cities: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego and San Francisco.
The results are the latest in a series of polls released this summer and fall on people’s priorities for public education. Gallup released a survey last week showing support for public schools was up by seven points compared to 2012; PDK’s annual poll showed deep support for public schools and investments in wraparound services such as mental health services and after-school programs and resources to prepare students for successful lives and careers and strong opposition to funding vouchers for religious school; and the Education Next poll showed public support for charter schools fell by 12 percentage points over the past year
And then there is that nettlesome fact that the states with voucher plans have few takers. In Louisiana and Indiana, only 2-3% of students apply for vouchers for private and religious schools, and some of those students already attend nonpublic schools.
Hello, Betsy: Pay attention to the nearly 90% of American students who attend public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The convergence of several polls is good, also the drop in support for charters, and meager uptake of vouchers. But, if more states follow the lead of New York, public schools are still on track for failure, and ESSA only adds to the hurdles for sustaining public schools. I would love to see a glass more than half full of good news for public schools.
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As an ardent believer in public schools, I’ve been feeling especially pessimistic lately. Common Core and the DeVos interpretation of ESSA cement the radical wrong turn we took after NCLB by redefining education as a set of pseudo-skills as opposed to a feast of mind-enhancing core knowledge. Behavior problems are being unleashed on schools by the revolting tedium of Common Core test prep along with misguided mandates to reduce suspension and expulsion rates in the very misguided belief that this will further racial justice. And maybe worst of all, low-quality digital curricula are shoving aside teachers and their analog, often hand-crafted, curricula, which, though of uneven quality, was probably mostly better than untested stuff made by callow young hires at Houghton Mifflin. I just learned today that CA has essentially mandated 1:1 instruction in its “Great Schools Blueprint”! (witness the soft- and fiscal-power of Silicon Valley). On top of all this, the union seems braindead and happy to rubber stamp all these “innovations”. It almost seems as if these stultifying, inexorable-seeming trends in public schools guarantee that the only refuge for real education in the future will be in charter and private schools.
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These poll results must be published and republished to have an effect on the politicians financed by the corporate forces of privatization, usurpation, and greed.
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Been noticing: In this country we seem to have more choices than ever, but the choices are NOT THAT GOOD and many are downright HORRID. Feed the people the line: More choices is better even if the choices are really, really BAD, AWFUL, TERRIBLE, and NO GOOD. This is Ameri-DUH.
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It’s good but so much of polling depends on how they frame the question I feel as if it’s mostly used to lobby rather than inform anyone.
Of course public school families support their schools more than Betsy DeVos does- DeVos doesn’t support their schools at all 🙂
We had a public school event this past week where some Ohio lawmakers appeared. They only show up from Labor Day until Election Day. Then it’s right back to bashing public schools.
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They are really incredible. This is the US Secretary of Education delivering her “public schools suck!” message to public school students:
From today’s remarks: “For far too many kids, this year’s first day back to school looks and feels a lot like last year’s first day back to school. And the year before that. And the generation before that. And the generation before that. That means your parents’ parents’ parents.
Most students are starting a new school year that is all too familiar. Desks lined up in rows. Their teacher standing in front of the room, framed by a blackboard. They dive into a curriculum written for the “average” student. They follow the same schedule, the same routine – just waiting to be saved by the bell. It’s a mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons, and denies futures.”
Good God. Do us a favor- stay in DC. Don’t come INTO our kid’s school and deliver this carefully crafted and coordinated incredibly dispiriting message!
What the hell is WRONG with these people?
This is REALLY UNFAIR to public school families, for a federal agency to be using taxpayer funds to tell kids that they are engaged in a “mundane malaise” – how can this possibly help?
Do us a favor. Don’t come. We’ll save millions of dollars and kids in public schools won’t be told their schools are these horrible hell-holes.
I don’t really need a political operative coming into my son’s school and telling him that he is “waiting to be saved by a bell”. He likes school.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/09/12/what-is-betsy-devoss-rethink-school-initiative-all-about-her-wyoming-speech-offers-clues/
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“Your success here at Woods is determined by what each of you are learning and mastering. Not by how long you sit at your desks.”
Great message, ed reform. Send a pack of adults out to tell public school students their success is measured by “how long they sit at their desks”
My son and his teachers don’t measure his success by how long he sits at his desk.
I know ed reform has a political agenda and it’s important they portray public schools as hellish nightmares but is this fair to public school families? That they go in and attempt to undo everything we tell our kids about how education can benefit them?
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“The end game … is personalized learning,” said Kevin Chavous, an AFC board member, said at the group’s convening in May. “We are going to get to this place where as opposed to every child being shepherded into a schoolhouse where they sit in a classroom and where a teacher stands and delivers, and then they regurgitate back … those days are not going to be the future.”
I’m really sorry that these ed reform lobbying groups and the US Department of Education see public schools in such a negative light.
Of course, they have no idea what they’re talking about as anyone who has been inside an actual public school the last 25 years knows, but that doesn’t matter to political operatives. The Movement comes first. Actual public school families are a distant 2nd or 3rd.
Which group of public school students will these federal employees propagandize next, and why are we paying for this?
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Fair warning to Colorado public school families:
“DeVos’s team is waiting until Tuesday to share which schools the controversial school choice advocate will visit.
We do know that DeVos’s trip to Colorado is part of her first multi-state tour and will include 13 schools in six states.”
The federal employees are on their way to tell your children school sucks!
And you’re all paying for it. DeVos’ security alone costs millions.
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Hope she’s shunned.
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I think that all sides in the education debate, should take a close look at our neighbor to the North. Canada has implemented some school choice programs, particularly in the province of Alberta. In Ontario, public school enrollment is down, and per-pupil expenditures are up. see
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/02/08/advice-for-betsy-devos-from-canada.html
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Parents and citizens rarely get to weigh in on privatization. Most parents are happy with public schools and support their efforts. Even when parents object and protest, they are often ignored. Reform is an entity unto itself lead by billionaires and corporations that want to shift public funds into private pockets. The only way to stop the steamroller is to vote out the political lap dogs that are pushing privatization for the billionaires and corporations.
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Why do you think that parents/citizens rarely get to “weigh in”? Parents/citizens can weigh in all they like. I contact my state representatives, and urge them to give Virginia parents and children choices in education. The state assembly passed a bill, but the government vetoed it.
School choice/vouchers are the “wave of the present”, and state after state, are bringing them in, and the states that already have school choice/vouchers/ESAs are expanding them (See Arizona!).
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School choice and vouchers are the wave of the 1950s, when the white people of Virginia turned to school choice and vouchers to thwart the Brown decision
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We Virginians take our history seriously. If you think that school choice plans in Virginia were successful, in thwarting school desegregation, you are wrong. See
Green v. School board of New Kent County (VA) 1968
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/695
(How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: It takes one to change the bulb, but it takes four more to set up a committee to preserve the old one! )
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Charles, Virginia certainly tried. Public schools were completely closed for years in some counties to evade desegregation.
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Would not a parental weighing look like a trip to a school board? Your state rep should make funds available for all students, but the money has to go through the local school board. If that board is stacked in favor of so-called school choice, it is hard to see how that is giving parents a voice.
When are we going to go back to governing for the good of all?
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see
http://www.vahistorical.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/education-virginia
We Virginians take our history seriously.
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Right, Charles. Politicians really listen to the people. Like how Rahm listened to packed houses of angry parents demanding that he not close their public schools. Thanks to those parents speaking up, not one public school was closed. Instead, the City of Chicago partnered with the State of Illinois to make sure that all of those schools were fully funded, physically rehabbed, well-resourced and safe.
Oh, oops, all 50 of them were closed, not one saved. Sorry, my bad.
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@Dienne: I checked and I found that the duly-elected school board of Chicago decided to close 50 schools. The article was from 2013. See
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-23/news/chi-chicago-school-closings-20130522_1_chicago-teachers-union-byrd-bennett-one-high-school-program
I think that is terrific. The exodus of families, and the under-enrollment of students, left the school board with no other choice.
Of course, some parents protested. School boards have the right to listen to the citizenry, and they also have the right to ignore the citizens, and then face them on election day.
The down-sizing of the school system was inevitable.
Similar down-sizing is occurring all across this nation, as jobs leave the inner cities, and the families relocate elsewhere.
This is the inevitable result of a dynamic economy.
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Charles,
Your idiotic comments exhaust me. The entire board of the Chicago public schools is appointed by Rahm Emanuel. It is not “duly elected.”
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“I think that is terrific.”
And in a mere five words you have succeeded admirably in summing up how utterly odious you truly are. Massive city-wide protest, packed to overflowing meetings, citizens storming the schoolboard, and you think it’s “terrific” that the Rahm appointed school board fully of rich mostly white folks closed 50 schools serving exclusively poor black and brown families. All I can say, I guess, is thank you for your honesty. It’s the same kind of “honesty” I’ve come to appreciate Trump for in a sick sort of way – at least he’s not ashamed to let his odiousness all hang out.
Incidentally, has it ever occurred to you to wonder about the exodus of poor and minority people from the city in the first place? Was it just one of those impersonal, invisible hand of the market sorts of things? And the fact that it happened to involve almost exclusively people of color was just unfortunate collateral damage?
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In one sentence, Charles says Chicago public schools are being closed because of declining enrollments. Then he says it’s all evidence of a “dynamic economy.”
Which one is it, Charles? It can’t be both.
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OK, my mistake. The school board of Chicago is duly appointed, not elected. There is action in Illinois, to change to an elected school board. see
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170601/jefferson-park/elected-school-board-okd-by-senate-putting-rahms-control-of-cps-doubt
Q In one sentence, Charles says Chicago public schools are being closed because of declining enrollments. Then he says it’s all evidence of a “dynamic economy.”
Which one is it, Charles? It can’t be both.
ENDQ
Of course, the causative factors behind the closing, are varied. The dynamic economy, the closing of factories, and the exodus of families (and students), caused the school-age population of Chicago to diminish.
If there are not enough students to justify the operation of 50 schools, then the duly-appointed school board had no choice.
Q Incidentally, has it ever occurred to you to wonder about the exodus of poor and minority people from the city in the first place? Was it just one of those impersonal, invisible hand of the market sorts of things? And the fact that it happened to involve almost exclusively people of color was just unfortunate collateral damage? END Q
The population decline in Chicago is due to several factors. (I used to work for the Census Bureau). When the labor-union wages made low-end manufacturing too costly, the factories closed, and the jobs moved elsewhere.
The color and ethnicity of the residents is irrelevant.
Chicago is not alone, in seeing the closing of factories, and the reduction of employment in the inner city. Pick a city: St; Louis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, etc.
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This email just was sent out by the WH. The WH is standing up for DeVos and her discrimination against women who have been raped.
………………………………
DeVos does her job: Due process on campus EDITORIAL September 12. 2017 12:32AM
Rape is a crime. This rather obvious observation seems to have eluded critics of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who last week rescinded the Obama administration’s guidelines to colleges on how to handle sexual assault allegations.
http://www.unionleader.com/editorial/DeVos-does-her-job-Due-process-on-campus-09122017
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“Rape is a crime”, said by the very people who work so hard to make sure that rapists never get criminally prosecuted let alone convicted. If there’s no conviction, there was no rape, right? How simple.
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Look at Donnie. What I want to write would not be good.
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Polls are empirical data… and in an administration where empirical data is ignored (see climate change) I doubt that these findings will persuade anyone to change their minds…
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“Polls are pseudo-empirical data…”
There, corrected.
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I think this is a good poll, but the source…..AFT poll, will simply be immediately dismissed, probably without looking at numbers. Teacher’s unions have been successfully demonized. That has always been the case, but never to the extent it was able to be accomplished under Arne Duncan and Bill Gates. Democrats simply are unwilling to own up to what happened, and even less so now that they have the DeVos excuse to not say a thing that means much of anything. They oppose vouchers. They go even further with their vehement condemnation of the KKK.
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Here’s the message the US Department of Education is delivering to public school students:
F”or far too many kids, this year’s first day back to school looks and feels a lot like last year’s first day back to school. And the year before that. And the generation before that. And the generation before that!
That means your parent’s parent’s parents!
Most students are starting a new school year that is all too familiar. Desks lined up in rows. Their teacher standing in front of the room, framed by a blackboard. They dive into a curriculum written for the “average” student. They follow the same schedule, the same routine—just waiting to be saved by the bell.
It’s a mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons, and denies futures.”
Do their parents know these kids are being told public schools suck? Do their parents know these federal employees are spending millions of dollars working AGAINST public school parents and teachers? Because we don’t actually do this when we send our kids to school- we don’t tell them they’re not learning anything and the schools they’re attending are actively working against their education. We don’t tell them that because it’s 1. not true and 2. not helpful to them.
I give the tech billionaires credit. At least they spend their own money on these political/propaganda campaigns . Ed reformers in government spend yours.
Where does the federally funded “public schools suck!” campaign stop today? Parents should be given a warning before their kids are subjected to this marketing campaign.
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So-called reformers are eager to offer parents a range of choices, except for the choice of a well-funded local public school, open to all.
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Amen, Michael.
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Junk food!
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