# how to understand the disparity in public's view of schools? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 7, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923 "2010-09-07T15:03:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/1 "2010-09-07T15:03:44Z")
I think this is best for GQ, but if not, I trust the mods will find a spot for it. In a recent Gallup Poll, 77% of the public would give the school that their oldest child attends a grade of A. 18% would give the schools in the rest of the country a grade of A. Since most people only know their own schools, and seem to be pretty satisfied with them, how do they get such a dismal impression of the rest of the schools? Note, I do not want to debate school quality, I want to know about how these disparate views are formed. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/2 "2010-09-07T15:08:23Z")
I, for one, would like to see the actual survey and how it was worded before jumping to conclusions. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/3 "2010-09-07T15:12:38Z")
Try tables #10, #11, ff. (the grades actually refer to the percentages of schools that would get an A _OR_ a B - the point is the same) [http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/docs/2010\_Poll\_Report.pdf](http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/docs/2010_Poll_Report.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/4 "2010-09-07T15:33:03Z")
Well, from that pdf: > [@](#): > > Differences between how Americans view their local > schools versus the nation’s schools suggests that Americans > like the schools they know but are much less positive > about public education in general. This finding is often > viewed from two very different perspectives. Some > compare it to similar findings in other situations. For example, > while Americans give Congress low grades, they > give their local congressperson much higher grades. Researchers > then write these two questions off as being consistent > with Americans’ fickleness toward their public and > private institutions. I’ve noticed this phenomenon in municipal elections, whereby everyone thinks that city council is a bunch of bumbling idiots, yet more often than not his or her councillor is doing a great job. (And is re-elected.) There must be a name for this type of parochialism. Oh wait, maybe that is the name. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/5 "2010-09-07T15:44:50Z")
Let’s say that Mrs. Homie and I had a baby nine months after we married. That would mean we’d have a ~12-year-old right about now (I don’t feel like doing math at the moment). The public school he/she would be attending (were we to send a kid to public school, which we totally wouldn’t), based on the area of town where we live, would be a school where he/she would, on a daily basis, run the risk of getting stabbed by a crack dealer for getting in the way of a deal; not to mention bullying, etc. And it would totally fail every educational standard set by No Child Left Behind. So yeah, we’d give it an F.\* ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/6 "2010-09-07T16:01:38Z")
I think it’s a matter of you don’t know what you don’t know. Unless you’re a consultant who travels around to many school districts in different areas, one wouldn’t have much basis for comparison. I was such a consultant, and was often amazed at how many teachers didn’t realize what shitholes their schools were. This worked against me when I became a teacher because I knew how much better things could be based on my prior experience. But there was no telling some people that when they had no experience of other places. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/7 "2010-09-07T18:49:47Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ve noticed this phenomenon in municipal elections, whereby everyone thinks that city council is a bunch of bumbling idiots, yet more often than not his or her councillor is doing a great job. (And is re-elected.) It makes sense, in elections. The people in a very conservative district will elect a very conservative representative, and be happy with em, but think the rest of the country is too liberal. Likewise, a liberal district will think the rest of the country too conservative, and a moderate district will think the rest of the country too polarized, and so on. But families in the public school system have much less say over their schools, so I suspect it’s a different phenomenon there. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/8 "2010-09-07T19:30:44Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > Let’s say that Mrs. Homie and I had a baby nine months after we married. That would mean we’d have a ~12-year-old right about now (I don’t feel like doing math at the moment). > > The public school he/she would be attending (were we to send a kid to public school, which we totally wouldn’t), based on the area of town where we live, would be a school where he/she would, on a daily basis, run the risk of getting stabbed by a crack dealer for getting in the way of a deal; not to mention bullying, etc. And it would totally fail every educational standard set by No Child Left Behind. So yeah, we’d give it an F.\* But if you did have a child in school, would you be living where you’re living now? ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/9 "2010-09-07T19:42:10Z")
Leaving aside NCLB’s merits or deficiencies, I would say that being bullied and performing to abstract standards with little basis in reality are both excellent training for modern adult life. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/10 "2010-09-07T19:46:39Z")
It’s because most people want to believe their kid is getting the best opportunity available to them, if not they would do something different for their own children, right? But in reality, most people know that their kids are getting short changed by our current schools, they understand it, they just don’t want to admit when it comes to their own kids. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/11 "2010-09-07T19:55:09Z")
I think there are a number of things going on here. The media likes bad news since thats what sells, so they will find a failing school or failing student an report on that. So the parents see their own school which isn’t so bad, but hear all these bad reports and so assume that problems are wide spread and that their school is the exception. The parents know their child’s teacher and principal, and they seem like nice, dedicated hard working people and so their school is good. They don’t have any personal contact with the rest of the country and so can criticize more freely. Everyone’s little Johny is a genius, but its clear that the nation is full of idiots when you look at (depending on you political persuasion) all the people who watch Fox news, or all the people who voted for Obama. So it must be that others aren’t getting the good education that Johny is getting. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/12 "2010-09-07T19:56:17Z")
Here’s my own wild-assed theory: the media loves to trumpet how bad things are, including the schools. The people involved with the schools love to trumpet how underfunded they are. The average person thus concludes that most schools suck. However, when they actually get involved they learn that their school is (overall) doing a pretty decent job. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/13 "2010-09-07T20:34:49Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > [@HeyHomie](#): > > > > Let’s say that Mrs. Homie and I had a baby nine months after we married. That would mean we’d have a ~12-year-old right about now (I don’t feel like doing math at the moment). > > > > The public school he/she would be attending (were we to send a kid to public school, which we totally wouldn’t), based on the area of town where we live, would be a school where he/she would, on a daily basis, run the risk of getting stabbed by a crack dealer for getting in the way of a deal; not to mention bullying, etc. And it would totally fail every educational standard set by No Child Left Behind. So yeah, we’d give it an F.\* > > But if you did have a child in school, would you be living where you’re living now? Probably, but we wouldn’t base where we lived on school choice. District 186 isn’t exactly known for its top-flight education performance, so our kids would be in private school regardless of what end of town we lived on. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/14 "2010-09-07T20:54:21Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > > But if you did have a child in school, would you be living where you’re living now? > > Probably, but we wouldn’t base where we lived on school choice. District 186 isn’t exactly known for its top-flight education performance, so our kids would be in private school regardless of what end of town we lived on. I have no complaints about the education I received from District 186 schools—but that was a while ago. But it’s my distinct impression that some of the city’s public schools have better reputations than others (for academic quality, safety, etc.), and if I had any school-age children, I would take this into account when deciding where to live—which would, in turn, make me likely to rate “my” public school more highly than others. (This may be more than a purely academic issue for me, as I am in a long-distance relationship with a woman who has a 10-year-old daughter. If they were to move to Springfield, I’d want to make sure we lived someplace where the daughter would be going to a good school.) ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/15 "2010-09-07T21:14:16Z")
Guilt. No one wants to admit, even to themselves, that their kids’ schools suck. Yet the nightly news is constantly telling us that our schools suck. The only way to relieve this cognitive dissonance is to conclude that your kids’ school is really pretty okay, while all the other schools suck. I was a parent at a truly, truly sucky school by any measure, and I heard this sort of thing all the time. By any measure, the school was terrible, but all I heard was how it wasn’t as bad as it used to be and things were really looking up and at least it was better than the \*other \*Chicago Public Schools’ high schools (it wasn’t). :dubious: As soon as we could (two years into it) we finally got our son out of there and into a charter school which, while not an Ivy League Prep school, doesn’t suck so much. By \*actual \*test scores and graduation rates, not parental consensus. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/16 "2010-09-07T21:50:25Z")
Perhaps it could be if your kid goes to a school that is awful, he has less competition and therefore is able to get better grades than if he had to be in a school where he had the competition and challanges he/she have had. So parents see their kid doing well at a bad school. They know the school is bad but their kid is getting “A’s” and “B’s” so it makes that school a bit better in their mind ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/17 "2010-09-08T00:17:15Z")
The 77% question is phrased as the school the **oldest child** goes to, while the 18% is looking at their estimation of all schools. So if high schools are better than middle schools and middle schools are better than elementary, you’d expect the phrasing of the question to skew the results. But I think a lot of it has to do with the media. If you look at a graph of crime reporting, actual crime rates and public concern about crime, you see something very interesting: crime reporting and actual crime rates are unrelated, but public concern and crime reporting show a direct correlation. In the same way, a lot of bad press about schools is going to drive a perception that schools are bad, but this might not be related to the actual quality of schools. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/18 "2010-09-08T01:49:37Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > …But I think a lot of it has to do with the media. If you look at a graph of crime reporting, actual crime rates and public concern about crime, you see something very interesting: crime reporting and actual crime rates are unrelated, but public concern and crime reporting show a direct correlation. In the same way, a lot of bad press about schools is going to drive a perception that schools are bad, but this might not be related to the actual quality of schools. This conforms to my own thoughts - there’s no way that anyone has any first or even second-hand observations of the rest of the schools in America. So they must have formed their views based on what they’ve heard. And the only way to “hear” what’s going on in the rest of the country is via the media. In fact, I think our state and national legislators get their understanding from the same sources and they turn around that “information” in the same way. Hence, schools are bad. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/19 "2010-09-08T06:33:11Z")
Ingroup bias. People tend to award a higher score to their own group than to others, even when there’s no evidence or reason. Outgroup homogeneity bias may be an influence too. People tend to regard other groups as having less variety than their own. (Our school has good with its bad; but other schools are uniformly bad). ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923/20 "2010-09-08T07:45:20Z")
If one subscribes to idea that parents greatly influence how well kids do in school then the statistics would naturally be skewed by a low response from poorly motivated parents. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-understand-the-disparity-in-publics-view-of-schools/552923.md?page=2)