Despite polling that shows parents are extremely dissatisfied with public schools, particularly in response to Covid pandemic shutdowns and other measures, Gallup has a poll with different findings.
The following is an excerpt from Gallup News.
The pandemic’s long-term impact on the education of American schoolchildren is, by definition, not going to be known for many years. In the short term, however, recent headlines have suggested the impact has been quite negative.
News reports have highlighted the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, which showed that nine-year-olds’ average scores declined five points in reading and seven points in math from 2020 to 2022.
The New York Times concluded that “The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading.”
The Washington Post editorial board asked, “Now the question confronting the nation’s schools is what to do about it.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial noted that “National test results reveal the damage from school closures.”
One might expect that parents of school-aged children would have become much less satisfied with their own children’s education over the past two years.
But surprisingly, parents appear to be just as satisfied with the quality of their kids’ educations now as they were before the pandemic.
As my colleague Lydia Saad reported in her recent analysis of Gallup’s August 2022 Work and Education survey, “Parents of children attending kindergarten through grade 12 remain largely content with their oldest child’s education.
The 80% who are completely or somewhat satisfied is slightly improved from the 73% measured a year ago and exceeds the average of 76% that Gallup has recorded since 2001.”
Why are parents seemingly not fazed by the impact of the pandemic on their kids’ education?
It is possible that parents are not yet cognizant of the pandemic’s effect on their children’s quality of education.
The only NAEP scores released to date are for nine-year-olds, and those came out after the Gallup update was conducted.
Until now, parents may have had no quantifiable basis for assessing what their kids did or did not learn during the pandemic.
As more evidence becomes available, parents’ perceptions could change.
Read more here.
Maybe the parents have been hypnotized? Maybe it’s something in the vaccine? Maybe it”s the constant bombardment of microwaves from the cell-towers? Whatever it is they really need to wake up. Fast. The degrading of our education system has been going on for DECADES.
Poll numbers are suspect, in general. Given that it had to do with education, I think that teachers flooded this poll along with family members and friends of their group.
I’m not surprised. Many parents are horrible teachers. They lack patience and many of the skills to effectively teach their own children. Others were desperate to get their children out of the house and out of their lives. Most people don’t raise their kids. The schools raise most children. I think many appreciate teachers and schools even more than before 2020.