Questioning the School Questionnaire
May 1st, 2007
As any pollster knows it’s all in what you ask and how you ask it – whether you ask, “Do you favor U.S. involvement in Iraq to bring freedom and peace to the Middle East?” Or “Do you favor U.S. involvement in Iraq to plunge a country into civil war and kill untold thousands of civilians?
Now the Bloomberg administration is getting a similar lesson. It announced yesterday it would ask 1.8 million parents, teachers and middle and high school students what they think of their “learning environment” (school those of us who don’t hang around Tweed Courthouse). The survey is part of the overall so-called accountability initiative.
But it ran head first into the thorny issue of what to ask and who’s is accountable for what. who exactly is accountable for what. The Public School Parents blog complains the survey neglects the big issues, such as test prep and class size. Instead, they wrote in a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the survey asks questions that ”appear to put the burden on us as parents if our children are not being adequately provided with individualized instruction.” The critics also complain that the quesitonnaire makes no effort to evaluate the people at Tweed Courthouse – who, of course, paid for the survey
As a result some parents who participated in focus group to draft the survey, “are calling on all parents to boycott the survey, cross out the questions listed, and before sending it back, write ‘We want real parent input – as well as smaller classes, less testing, and new priorities at Tweed to deal with the real problems in our schools.’”
(What struck this public school parent about the survey was how little of it relates to what kids actually learn in school.)
Daily Gotham ’ focuses on a line at the bottom of the survey: “Survey responses are being collected by an external vendor, assuring the confidentiality of answers.” It writes, “Don’t you think that anybody espousing platitudes about transparency and open government would at least have the clarity of mind to say who is the external vendor we are to hold accountable for such work? Don’t you want to know how much are these “external vendors” are being paid?.”
Apparently the mayor is not terribly interested in grading the survey itself, Asked about the complaints, he said the critics want to “subvert the system and sit around and complain and not make it any better.”
But the survey has fans, too. The Voz Iz Neias blog, which bills itself as the voice of the city’s Orthodox Jewish community, says, “It would be a good idea for Yeshivas, and Jewish private schools to follow this idea.”
By Gail Robinson on May 1, 2007, 3:47 pmIn category: Education, Gotham City | 1 Comment »



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April 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
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