Parents, angry about DOE survey, post their own

Posted by Unknown at 10:59 AM

If you visited the DOE website recently, you probably saw ever more frantic calls to fill out the DOE Parent Survey. The survey was part of a major plan to get parental input, and Chancellor Klein assembled a parent focus group to help put it together.

Some of those parents were seriously disenchanted when the final survey was published, and it lacked questions about parent support for mayoral control, trust for Klein and Mayor Bloomberg, and other issues about public school policy-- all questions that those parents had called for during their focus group meetings. In response, some parents put together their own survey, one that asks questions the DOE survey didn't include.

The parent survey is sponsored by Class Size Matters, a NYC organization that has been at odds with much of the Klein reforms. Class size matters called for a boycott of the DOE parent survey, asking parents to return the form with the questions crossed out, instead writing "We want real parent input – as well as smaller classes, less testing, and new priorities at Tweed to deal with the real problems in our schools."

The survey includes questions like: "How responsive do you feel Joel Klein and the leadership of the New York City Department of Education have been to the needs and priorities of parents?" and "How much stress to standardized tests cause your child? (a) too much stress (b) too little stress (c) the right amount of stress, or (d) don't know."