What Parents Want for Education Policy

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/what-parents-want-education-policy-1374672530

When politicians make the case that parents, rather than professional educators, should run schools, they reinforce the idea that when education is the issue at hand, the only “adults” who matter are parents, and the interests of teachers are misaligned to the well-being of students.

So what do parents want?

A revealing new study indicates that parents don’t want what the education reform crowd is selling. Not at all.

First reported in The Washington Post, the survey, conducted by the American Federation of Teachers, found that “counter the argument made by those pushing policy changes that parents want more choice in deciding where to send their children and a market-based approach to education,” what parents really want is more aligned with what teachers have been saying all along.”

Much like teachers, most parents (61 percent) oppose closing low-performing schools and reassigning students to a different school. They – “more than three out of every four” – are against “reducing compensation for teachers or cutting resources for the classroom while increasing spending on charter schools.” They tend (56 percent) to oppose “giving tax dollars to families to pay for private school tuition.”


Most parents say “too much learning in the classroom has been sacrificed in order to accommodate state tests during the school year.” And, like teachers, they believe that “layoffs and a high turnover of teachers; closing schools in major cities; reducing art and music instruction to focus on math and reading; increasing class sizes; and cutting school budgets have had a negative effect on public schools.”