============================================== Public Agenda Alert -- Special Edition - Feb. 21, 2001 * Reality Check 2001 Survey on School Standards Released http://www.publicagenda.org ============================================== Reality Check 2001 Survey on School Standards Released The drive to set higher educational standards has started to take hold in America's schools, according to the fourth Reality Check survey by Public Agenda, available at: http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/rc2001/reality.htm Reality Check is designed to track whether standards have made a difference by surveying the people who should know: the students, parents and teachers actually in public schools, and the employers and college professors who deal with recent graduates. In previous years, we found strong support overall for high standards, but few who reported significant changes in their own schools. But our 2001 survey found several statistically significant changes in perception. Fewer teachers report their schools using social promotion, and more parents say their children have to pass standardized tests to advance in school. Intriguingly, the perception gap between public and private schools seems to be narrowing. Four years ago, just one parent out of five (22 percent) said that local public schools had higher standards than local private schools, but in 2001 this number has jumped to 34 percent. The number giving private schools the edge on standards has dropped from 42 percent to 35 percent. Employers, who have always been among the toughest critics of local schools in previous Reality Check surveys, still voice considerable doubts about students' basic skills. But almost twothirds of employers (64 percent) say kids don't graduate from local schools unless they have learned what was expected of them, up from 51 percent in 1999. Although high-stakes standardized tests are often controversial, Reality Check picks up few signs of public backlash. Neither parents, teachers, nor students themselves voice significant dissatisfaction with testing in their own schools. Large majorities of all groups express strong support for their own district's efforts to raise standards and for using standardized tests to enforce standards, although few believe a student's future should rest on one highstakes test. Most students say the tests they take seem fair, and few say they have to take too many of them. Teachers are the most skeptical of testing, but only onefifth say they have to focus on test preparation so much that real learning is neglected. Still, 83 percent of teachers do say they worry "teaching to the test" could become the norm, and nearly half fear schools will be overwhelmed with students who fail the test. This year's Reality Check devotes a battery of questions to the use of computers in schools. Here again, reports from the field suggest that technology, like standards, is slowly but surely recasting the way American students learn. Virtually all students say they've used a computer in school this year, and nearly twothirds say they used computers for substantive learning. Nearly eight in 10 teachers say they use computers regularly or sometimes, and of those only one quarter believe the technology is overrated. Reality Check is a joint project of Public Agenda and Education Week, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the GE Fund. In addition to the Web version of this year's survey, presentations are also available for previous Reality Check reports at: http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/rc2001/reality.htm If you know anyone who would be interested in this alert, please pass it on in full, with the copyright notice intact. UNSUBSCRIBING FROM THIS ALERT LIST: Send a blank message (nothing needs to be written in the body of the text) to the following e-mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/PROBLEMS: Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright (c) 2001 Public Agenda ---------------End of Original Message----------------- -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
