Friday, July 8, 2011

2011 Survey results: Teachers are dissatisfied with the chancellor, and parents want smaller classes more than ever!!

The 2011 DOE learning environment surveys are out; here is where you can find the results for your child's school; here is the citywide summary; here are some charts

Two findings that immediately stood out for me:


Teachers really didn't like Cathy Black and/or Walcott; above is a chart showing their feelings about the chancellor, when the survey closed on April 15.  (Strangely, the DOE claims on p. 11 here that Walcott's tenure started on April 18; but actually he started April 7. ).  The majority of teachers were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with his/her performance. 

Parents were happier, with more than 50% satisfied or very satisfied with the chancellor -- though less so than last year, when over 60% were satisfied.

Even more than ever, though, parents are dissatisfied with their children's class sizes; as smaller class sizes continue to be their top preference for what improvement they'd like to see in their children's schools, as it has been  every single year that the survey has been given.

And yet class sizes have gone up sharply every year of the last three, and are now larger in the early grades than they have been in more than a decade.

Which really shows the lie to the administration's supposed interest in catering to parent "choices", no?  And really undermines the apparent purpose of this survey.

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