Parents, teachers answer survey on ‘No Child’ testing

Demographics and details of the AP-AOL Learning Services poll of parents and teachers about standardized testing and schools meeting deadlines set by the No Child Left Behind law.

The survey information comes from a poll of 1,085 parents of school-age children in kindergarten to grade 12 and a poll of 810 teachers of students in kindergarten to grade 12. The survey was conducted online Jan. 13-23 for The Associated Press and AOL by Knowledge Networks after respondents were contacted through traditional telephone polling. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for parents and 3.5 points for teachers.

HIGHLIGHTS: Almost eight in 10 parents of schoolchildren said they were confident their child’s school will meet their state’s standards by 2013-2014. But only half of teachers felt their school would meet that deadline. Parents were almost twice as likely as teachers to be “very confident” their child’s school would meet the deadline.

Parents, 31 percent, were twice as likely as teachers, 15 percent, to say current standards are too lenient.

INCOME DIFFERENCES: About three in 10 – or 29 percent – of parents with household incomes less than $25,000 said they were “very confident” about meeting deadlines for state standards, compared with 49 percent of those with household incomes of at least $75,000. The significant differences are in the intensity of feeling, not in confidence vs. lack of confidence. A solid majority of those polled said the standards are about right. Those with household incomes under $25,000 were more likely to say that state standards are too harsh, 17 percent, compared with those earning $75,000 and over, 6 percent.

RACIAL DIFFERENCES: White teachers were slightly more likely, 17 percent, to say state standards for reading and math are too lenient, compared with 7 percent of minority teachers. But minority teachers were slightly more likely to be confident that their school would meet the standards by the deadline, 58 percent, than were white teachers, 47 percent. Minority parents, 16 percent, were slightly more likely than white parents, 11 percent, to say their state’s standards are too harsh.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE: Public school teachers were much less confident, 46 percent, than private school teachers, 80 percent, that their schools would meet the deadline. Public school teachers were much more likely, 22 percent, to say that standards are too harsh than were private school teachers, 8 percent.

Parents of public school students were less confident, 76 percent, than parents of private school students, 88 percent, that their schools will meet the deadline.

Analysis by AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson.