Grade School Receives Best Parent Ratings

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Education in the nation's K-12 schools gets a "so-so" rating from the American public at the start of this school year. Slightly more Americans tell Gallup that they are dissatisfied with the quality of education nationally than say they are satisfied. At the same time, most parents of school-aged children give a positive assessment of their own children's experience. Parents with children enrolled in kindergarten through grade 5 are particularly satisfied with their child's schooling, compared with parents of children in higher grades.

Gallup's Aug. 5-8 survey finds two-thirds of all parents with children in kindergarten through grade 12 (68%) saying they are satisfied with the education their oldest child receives. Only 27% are dissatisfied.

Parental Satisfaction With Child's Education

Aug 5-8, 2002

These ratings are down slightly compared to last year when 72% were satisfied, but remain much stronger than the public's general assessment of education. Only 47% of the public is satisfied with the quality of education in the nation; 50% are dissatisfied.

Grade School Parents Are Most Satisfied

A composite of Gallup's annual education polls since 1999 shows that 40% of parents with a child in kindergarten through grade 5 are "completely satisfied" with that child's education. By contrast, only 26% of parents with children in grades 6-8 are completely satisfied with the education that child is receiving, similar to the 28% for children in grades 9-12.

Total parental satisfaction is much higher when factoring in the percentage who are at least "somewhat satisfied." On this basis, three-quarters of parents of grade school children are satisfied, compared with two-thirds of parents of older children.

Public School Parents Lag Behind Private/Parochial Parents in Satisfaction

Gallup's historic data shows that public school parents are far less likely to feel satisfied with their child's education in comparison to those with children attending one of the non-public alternatives -- either parochial, private, or home school. Barely one-quarter of public school parents say they are completely satisfied with their child's education, compared with 58% of non-public school parents. But again, the vast majority of both groups feel at least somewhat satisfied.

Parental satisfaction stands in sharp contrast to the public's more muted assessment of education nationally. Only 7% of Americans today are "completely satisfied" with the quality of education students receive in kindergarten through grade 12 in the United States. But, with another 40% saying they are "somewhat satisfied," the total number falling on the satisfied side of the ledger is close to half the public. At the same time, slightly more are dissatisfied, including 18% who are completely dissatisfied and 32% who are somewhat dissatisfied.

Looking for the Achievement Gap

Whether they are white, black, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian-American will, to a large extent, predict their success in school, whether they go to college, and how much money they will earn as adults. Despite decades of attention, gaps in the achievement of minority students remain one of the most pressing problems in education.

Over the years, there has been a widely reported "academic achievement gap" between minority (particularly black and Hispanic) students and white students. Despite this, Gallup finds little difference between white and non-white parents in their school satisfaction ratings.

Similar percentages of each racial group -- whites, blacks and all non-whites -- say they are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their oldest child's education. The total percentage dissatisfied is also similar across racial groupings. There is one difference seen among the dissatisfied groups -- the much higher proportion of blacks and non-whites who are "completely dissatisfied," compared with whites.

Similarly, Gallup polling finds little difference in parental satisfaction according to the size of one's community, with urban and rural parents appearing to be just as satisfied as suburban parents with their children's schooling. Little difference is also seen according to household income; in fact, those in households earning less than $30,000 per year are slightly more likely to be completely satisfied with their children's education than are those making $75,000 or more.

Implications

Many factors go into parents' ratings of their children's education, not the least of which is expectations. This adds an additional element of variability to the equation in comparisons of parents' ratings of K-5 schooling with ratings of education at higher grades, as well as those between whites and minority groups. In addition to measuring real differences in the quality of education, the Gallup measure may reflect different levels of expectations between parent groups.

Thus, the fact that K-5 education elicits higher parent satisfaction could have as much to do with different parental expectations at that grade level, compared with expectations at higher grades. Of course it could also reflect real differences in the quality of teaching and overall education in those grades. But the "satisfaction gap" here does demand some investigation. The answer could help inform education reforms in the future.

Similarly, the lack of a strong "satisfaction gap" between whites and blacks (a finding incongruous with levels of academic achievement among different racial and ethnic groups) could point to differences in parental attitudes that hold the key to equalizing academic achievement.

Survey Methods

The latest results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,007 adults, 18 years and older, conducted Aug. 5-8, 2002. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Recent data on parents of children in grades K-12 are based on interviews 283 national adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 6 percentage points. Historical data on the attitudes of parents is based on four national surveys conducted between 1999 and 2002, includes interviews with 846 national adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of education students receive in kindergarten through grade 12 in the U.S. today -- would you say you are completely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied?

How satisfied are you with the quality of education your oldest child is receiving? Would you say you are completely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied?

BASED ON --283 -- K-12 PARENTS

* -- Less than 0.5%