Parents play pivotal role in education

Kids who dread the prospect of spending more hours in school and taking more standardized tests may be surprised to find support from an unexpected source: America’s parents.

According to a new survey, only one in four parents believes that adopting year-round classes would have a significant positive impact on student performance, and fewer than one in five support lengthening the school day as a means to produce that result.

Their top choices among possible remedies: increasing teacher salaries, requiring universal pre-school and adopting consistent statewide curricula.

Today’s parents also question the growing reliance on standardized tests. Fewer than half of the surveyed parents are convinced that such tests are even fair, and nearly six in 10 opposed using them as the primary tool for measuring how well their children are doing in school.

Their preferred alternative was the traditional yardstick of grades.

"In this area, parents clearly are on a different page than politicians, who have made standardized testing a lynchpin of education reform legislation," said Louis G. Lower II, president and CEO of Horace Mann Educators Corporation, the survey sponsor. "The survey findings suggest a need for parents’ voices to be heard and heeded on this vital subject."

Parents and politicians also have differing views of the problems facing education today.

Most legislative initiatives pinpoint the need to improve student achievement as the core issue, while survey respondents ranked insufficient funding for schools, overcrowding and a teacher shortage at the top of their list of school-related concerns.

Given these differing perspectives, it’s no surprise that nearly eight in 10 parents were skeptical that Washington can solve the nation’s education problems, and fewer than one in 20 said federal legislators should have ultimate responsibility for the performance of local schools.

Parents should accept that burden themselves, even over school administrators or teachers, the survey respondents insisted.

"The survey results demonstrate that parents realize they can and must play a pivotal role in the education process for it to realize its full potential," said Lower.

The telephone survey of 891 parents with at least one child in kindergarten through 12th grade was conducted by Market Facts, Inc., an independent research firm.