Parents, Teachers, and Confidence about NCLB

Apparently, parents in a survey are more confident about reaching the goals set by NCLB than teachers are.

Setting high expectations for students has become such a priority that Congress passed a law about it. Now schools must make sure all children succeed in math and reading, no matter what their language barrier or level of poverty or support at home.

Realistic? Many parents seem to think so. But plenty of teachers do not.

Almost eight in 10 parents are confident their local school will get all students up to state standards in reading and math by 2013-14, an AP-AOL Learning Services poll finds.

Yet only half of teachers are confident that all students in their school will meet that deadline, which was set by the No Child Left Behind Act that Congress passed in 2001.

That means the two major groups of adults in kids' lives have a huge expectations gap.

The finding underscores a theme in the poll. Parents and teachers often disagree on daily aspects of education, from the state of discipline to the quality of high schools.

A major reason is that adults see the children differently. Parents tend to focus on their own children, while teachers work with dozens of students from different backgrounds.

One obvious flaw to the methodology of this type of survey is that only parents who are engaged in their children's education would participate in a survey. Would that those parents were the majority of parents with whom we deal-- but we all know that is not the case. Unfortunately, many of the parents of the students who struggle the most, or who do not care, have parents who don't even allocate resources to their children's breakfasts, much less devoting minutes to answering a survey.

Read the entire article-- it's quite thought-provoking.