Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

NYC Parents Are Satisfied With Their Kids' Public Schools... as Usual?

By Amy Zimmer | July 20, 2015 4:45pm
 A classroom at P.S. 295, an arts-focused school in the South Slope. Of the school's 65 percent of parents who responded to the NYC Schools Survey, 94 percent reported satisfaction, according to DOE data.
A classroom at P.S. 295, an arts-focused school in the South Slope. Of the school's 65 percent of parents who responded to the NYC Schools Survey, 94 percent reported satisfaction, according to DOE data.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Leslie Albrecht

New York City parents are overwhelmingly "satisfied" with their children's public and charter schools, according to survey results of more than 1,800 schools released Monday by the Department of Education.

"The results suggest high overall satisfaction with the city’s schools, as 95 percent of parents report satisfaction with their child’s education," boasted the press release, highlighting the positive responses of the more than 950,000 parents, teachers and students filled out on the ninth annual NYC School Survey during what was Chancellor Carmen Fariña's first full year at the helm.

A closer look at the data, however, revealed that the satisfaction rate has remained exactly the same for each of the past three school years, including when then-Chancellor Dennis Walcott ran the schools under the Bloomberg administration.

Education experts said this shouldn't be surprising, even if there's growing dissatisfaction with larger issues like high stakes testing and the increasingly difficult Common Core standards.

"This follows national data that parents tend to like their individual schools and teachers, but think less of the state of education generally," David Bloomfield, education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center said.

People are generally satisfied with the micro-level of their school and their children's teacher but may take issue with the bigger picture of where the education system is heading, he said.

"That's just the way it goes," said Bloomfield, noting that people also generally report satisfaction with their local politicians too while complaining about the bigger picture state of politics.

No school saw less than 70 percent of parents satisfied with their children's education.

Still, many schools did not get a lot of parent participation: less than half of parents filled out the survey at roughly 47 perent of schools.