While the results of the Department of Education’s public opinion survey on the school system will not be tabulated for several months, the verdict from the eight parents who helped design the questionnaire is already in — and the news is not promising.“This is simply another (public relations) offensive by Tweed (education headquarters) to try to show that they really care about what parents think when the reality is otherwise,” the parents wrote in a scathing e-mail to the office of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein last week. “Parents’ voices and views have again been stifled, even when it comes to the survey itself.”
In an effort to solicit greater input from the public, the department sent out surveys this week to more than 1.8 million students, teachers and parents about their attitude toward public education in New York City. The goal, according to education officials, was to assess the performance of each school citywide, while gaining insight into the concerns of parents and educators.
The survey results will count toward about 10 percent of each school’s performance grade, ranging from A through F. And while responses from parents will have slightly more weight than those of students or teachers, critics charged that the questionnaire pays scant attention to the issues that matter most to the public.
Instead, it focuses largely on satisfaction ratings — ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” — on school quality, activities and coursework. Absent from all but one of the 14 multiple-choice questions are concerns regarding class size, standardized testing, test preparation and principals’ attitudes toward parents, critics said.
One question at the end of the survey asks parents to choose just one of 10 potential “improvements” they would most like to see at their child’s school.
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