All This NCLB Aggravation Ain’t Satisfactioning Me

The Salt Lake Tribunereports today on a study that says, in gauging teachers, parents are more interested in student satisfaction than achievement. “NCLB might be missing what many parents want most,” the Tribune writes.

The study looked at teacher characteristics in cases where parents could pick their kid’s teacher. Parents were more likely to pick the teacher with a high “satisfaction” rating than a high achievement rating, the Tribune reported.

Are parents really saying they don’t care about school performance, they just want their kids to have fun? Let’s consider a few things.

The study looked at only one school district, parents picked teachers with high satisfaction ratings over high achievement ratings 55 percent of the time, and teacher characteristics were defined by principals. And, no surprise, income had an influence. As in, the lower your income, the more you care about a teacher’s ability to raise test scores, leading the study’s authors to speculate that achievement might be a given in a more affluent school, so richer parents turn to other concerns.

Still, the study is the latest to give credence to parent concerns about NCLB’s overemphasis on testing.

 ”While achievement is important, what we’re trying to produce in schools and what parents want schools to produce is much broader than test score gains,” study co-author and Brigham Young associate professor Lars Lefgren told the Tribune.

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