Poll Analysis: What Parents, Children and Teachers Think About California's Public Education System

The issue of education covers a lot of ground. One can focus on school facilities; are there enough books to go around? Are the facilities adequate and safe for children and their teachers? One can look at the public school curriculum, the quality of teachers, and the hot-button issues of standardized testing and bilingual education. Does the system need more money, or to use existing money more wisely? In each case, parents, their children, and their children's teachers must bring their own unique point of view to bear.

In order to shed some light in this area, The Times Poll surveyed 1091 California public school teachers November 13-16, 1997. Between November 18th and December 12, 1997, the Times Poll interviewed 2,804 California adults, including 1,281 parents in addition to 545 of their 12 to 17 year old children. "Parents" were defined, for the purposes of this survey, as adults having at least half custody of at least one child between the ages of 5 and 17 who was currently in school. In many cases, similar or identical questions were asked of respondents in each of the surveys, allowing analysis of questions across the three groups and their sub-populations.

Teachers generally approve of the public school system which employs them and their answers reflect this attitude. Parents are concerned about the education their children receive, and look at the schools from two points of view -- as taxpayers that fund a system that was often perceived to be inadequate, and as consumers who, if they are able, must choose whether to place their children in public or private school. Children are in the trenches, studying from the textbooks, sitting in the classrooms, looking toward the future from the vantage of a front-row seat in what nearly everyone agrees is a public school system in need of reform.

Parents give the public school system low marks overall, but teachers and children grade it higher.

There was a wide divergence in viewpoints between teachers and parents of school-age children on the quality of the public school system. Parents regarded the national and state level school system quite negatively and were split over the quality of their local schools, while teachers gave fairly enthusiastic ratings to all levels of the system.

When asked to rate the nation's public schools, only a quarter of the parents in the survey responded "excellent" or "good." Nearly the same proportion (28%) gave one of these two highest ratings to California's public schools. In stark contrast, a majority of public school teachers in the survey gave a strong thumbs up to the public schools -- 64% gave one of these two highest ratings to the nation's schools, and 61% rated California's schools "excellent" or "good."

Both groups tended to view their own familiar local public schools with much higher regard than either the more abstract state or national system. Parents were split 49% to 48% over whether to rate their local public schools excellent/good or fair/poor, including only 9% who gave an "excellent" rating. One third of teachers in the survey, on the other hand, gave the highest rating to the school system they teach in every day. An impressive four out of five teachers gave their local schools one of the two highest ratings, while 19% rated them "fair" or "poor."

When children between ages of 12 and 17 were asked to rate the education they've received, they generally were in agreement with their teachers that it has been pretty good. Eighty-one percent of the younger middle-school children gave their education one of the two highest ratings, and 72% of high-school age children agreed. Overall, 76% of the 12- to 17-year-olds in the survey gave one of the two highest ratings to their education, and 24% rated their education as "fair" or "poor."

Teachers are given the most credit for what is good about California's schools; state government is blamed for its flaws. Parents give themselves credit, but teachers disagree.

Parents and teachers who rated California's schools as "excellent" or "good" tended to give credit for its positive condition to the teachers. A 58% majority of teachers and a 37% plurality of parents who rated schools excellent or good named teachers when asked to choose from a selection of possible school benefactors.

Similar proportions of teachers and parents gave credit to the state government or school administrators although these categories were among parents' top mentions. State government was mentioned by 13% of parents and 8% of teachers while school administrators received credit from 11% of parents and 7% of teachers.

Interestingly, more than one out of five parents felt that they -- the parents -- should be given credit for the good quality of the state's schools. Teachers don't agree -- only 5% thought parents were the main contributors to the quality of the state's school system.

When it came to assigning blame for the low quality of California's schools, the survey found that 21% of parents and nearly the same proportion (23%) of teachers who rated California's schools "fair" or "poor" named the state government as the culprit. Another 6% of teachers and 8% of parents blamed Wilson for the school system's woes. School administrators were fingered for blame by 11% of teachers and even more (16%) parents. Twelve percent of each group said there was not one scapegoat, that blame could be laid at everyone's door. One in five teachers said that the parents of children who attend the state's public schools could do more to improve the situation, and 14% of the parents themselves agreed. Virtually no one (5% of parents and 2% of teachers) blamed the teachers.

Overcrowding, budget cuts are considered most important problem facing local schools by parents and teachers. Children say it is violence and drugs.

In this series of questions, children were asked what they felt was the most important problem facing their own school, teachers were asked about the problems facing the school in which they teach, and parents were asked about the problems facing their local public schools. Two answers were allowed.