Final Results

Well, it's been a month since the last survey was completed.  So, as promised, here are the full results if anybody would like to see them.  I don't think there are really enough responses to prove anything beyond the shadow of a doubt, but there are certainly some trends that started to form.  The most important thing at the end of the day, is that you need to speak up.  Talk to your teachers and your parents about your frustrations.  If everybody is constructively vocal about their frustrations with the issues in the schools, they won't have any choice but to listen.  Encourage anybody you know have the same issues to come forward as well. We've been in touch with our kids' teachers and principal, we expect you to do the same!

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Regardless of the double negative, it looks like I won’t be satisfied.  It’s now been 3 days since there have been any new responses.  It sits at a total of 38, which is nowhere near what I was hoping for.  My dream was to get a couple hundred responses from all over the district.  I figured that would give everybody a really good feeling what other parents were experience both by school and by grade.  I guess most people just aren’t that interested.  This in itself concerns me because, if other parents are really not that interested in what’s happening in their kids’ schools or classrooms, then that’s only going to encourage the state, district, schools, and the teachers to do what they want based on ridiculous government studies, rather than doing the will of the people.  Anyway, I will digress before this becomes a political rant.

Speaking of not being satisfied, many of the respondents (18%) have decided the SWSD hasn’t been serving them in the best interest of the kids, and have chosen to home school or use a private school.  What’s interesting is that the themes of concern are basically the same between the parents with kids in the public schools, and those who have already removed their kids.  They basically boil down to communication, lack of academic achievement, and lack of discipline both by the schools and the other parents.  So I wonder, are parents who are concerned about these same things the only ones with enough motivation to fill out a survey like this?  It doesn’t look like they’re necessarily the only ones, but it does appear there is a lot of dissatisfaction.  I would argue that you’re not going to make everybody happy all the time, but a school district should be able to do better than having more than a third of all parents dissatisfied about the job they’re doing across a number of different major issues.  Because of the similarity in concerns between those dissatisfied with the school who currently have kids in the district, and those who have already removed their kids, does this mean that there are a large number of parents that are on the verge of removing their kids?

Add up the green (very dissatisfied) and red (dissatisfied) below to see the large number of unhappy parents across nearly every aspect surveyed.

Speaking of Communication

Reponses seem to trickle in, but I fear the communication to the masses has ceased, and so I won’t get the statistics I was hoping for.  I would love to see the answers to these questions from school to school and grade to grade, but we’d need a higher number of responses to see that.  If you want to see that too, you’d need to forward the link on to more people and ask them to fill it out.  If you’ve subscribed to this feed by email, then simply forward the email.  If you’re reading this because somebody forwarded it to you, then the place you want to go is http://swparents.blogspot.com to find out what neat things we’re trying to learn about each other.

Speaking of communication, I have to be honest.  The idea for this survey and the blog were self serving, but we also figured it would serve others.  We’ve been feeling like the communication we’re getting from the classroom just isn’t up to par in the Sedro-Woolley School District.  Now, that seems to be okay in lower grades where most of the work is done in the classroom.  However, our oldest daughter just entered 5th grade this year, and the homework really took off.  There’s more daily work, and there’s more projects.  It’s been a big adjustment to try to keep her on track and organized enough to know what’s due and when.  She’s coming along, but part of the struggle on our part in helping her is that we need to know the same things, so that we can teach her how to stay on track.  

Now, if she were perfect at organizing and prioritizing, then she would accurately relay all the information to us from the teacher, and then we’d relay it back to her.  Do you see the problem with that?  If she could accurately bring the information home from school and relay it to us, then we wouldn’t need to teach her anything because she’d already have it figured out.  The problem is you can’t rely on a 5th grader that you’re trying to teach organization and communication to, to be the primary means of organization and communication.  It just doesn’t make sense. 

We’ve talked to the teacher and the school about this, but they don’t seem inclined to make any changes.  We began wondering, is it just us?  Are we being unreasonable to expect the teacher to communicate directly with us?  Is it too much of a burden to expect teachers to communicate electronically to eliminate the mounds of paper?  Should getting homework and test scores back in a reasonable amount of time so we can stay on top of grades be considered something only the exceptional teachers do, and not just the standard expected of every teacher?  These weren’t problems we had before 5th grade.

Well, from looking at the surveys filled out, they would suggest this isn’t all that abnormal.  If we take a look at parents of kids in grades 1-5, notice how the parents of 5th graders (the green) would rate the communication with the child’s teacher.  I think the chart is a bit misleading because a higher number of responses might balance it out better, but I don’t think it is any fluke that as the kids progress from 3rd to 4th to 5th, that the average view of communication with the classroom deteriorates.   Is it because K-4th grade teachers are so much better at communicating?  I don’t think so.  I just don’t think there is as much of a need in those grades, and then when it becomes needed it doesn’t happen, so parents become frustrated.  Am I wrong 5th grader parents?

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?  I don’t know.  There isn’t really enough data to see any sort of trend, since most responses come from the parents of the younger kids.  I’d like to hope that perhaps the CMS and high school teachers have parent communication figured out a little better, but I guess the jury is out on that opinion unless we can get more parents take the survey.  Maybe their lack of willingness to participate in something like this suggests that everything is going well for them.  I sure hope so.

What Are Other People Saying?

There are a few people that have left comments with permission to use them, so I’d like to start letting you all see what other people are saying as well.  Here’s one that came in over the weekend.

“I currently have 4 children in the SWSD. I was only able to click on one school...I like being able to see what assignments my child has out, via the internet, at CMS. This has helped my husband and I to be more aware of her grade standings and areas that she is needing help. Also, Thank you for taking the time to compile this information for us!!!!!”

First, just so everybody is aware, if you have more than 1 child in the district, please run through the survey once for each child.  This is because I know the experience from classroom to classroom may vary greatly, so we want to account for that.

The second thing brought up here is interesting.  I was not aware that CMS had assignments and grades online.  Why isn’t the rest of the district doing this?   This is one major complaint we have with the elementary classrooms we’ve been in so far.  It would seem in this day and age that there’s no good reason not to have more electronic communication at all grade levels.  It would seem that given the responses to the question about how you would prefer to receive a newsletter, that many of you feel the same way.

I can see how these results might be skewed though, because clearly the fact that you’re willing to take an online survey, means that you’re somewhat accustomed to doing things online.  I wonder if you got a bunch of people to take the survey on paper, what would they say?

I’d love to see more things done online.  It would be so much easier for those of us that prefer to communicate that way, and it would certainly be cheaper because you’d save a lot of money in paper and toner.

What do you think?

Are We Running Out Of Gas?

Maybe.  I thought we were getting the ball rolling the other day when the responses were starting to come in more quickly, but then things tapered off yesterday with only a few new responses.  Perhaps people just aren’t interested in what’s going on in their school, or perhaps they don’t particularly care about any but their own experience.   Maybe it’s just that they aren’t technically savvy enough to respond online?  If that’s the case you’ll notice to the left that I’ve provided a downloadable PDF of the survey if you’d like to print it and give it to someone.  They can then give it back to you and you can enter it online for them.  If you don’t want to enter it, get it to me and I’ll do it!  Perhaps nobody is even reading this.

Speaking of running out of gas, from the responses so far it really looks like as parents that we run out of gas as our kids get older.  If you look at the chart above, notice how average responses seem to noticeably decline as the average age of the children goes up.  Perhaps the kids become more independent and we don’t need or want to know what’s going on in the classroom?  First graders are by far the most responsive group.  Oddly there’s no kindergarten responses though, so maybe we don’t even care until our kids start getting past their ABC’s.  Interesting.  Draw your own conclusions.

How Big Is Your Piece Of The Pie?

Like yesterday morning, here’s where the contributed responses have come from so far.  You can also now see the quantity.   About 30 in a couple of days is a good start, but as you can see we need many more to get any meaningful results.  Evergreen and Clear Lake are leading the charge, and a few Big Lake, middle school, and high school parents have got the word which is good.  Lyman has yet to be represented.   Forward it to your friends and have them take it, and tell them to do the same.  Go on...do it...I’ll wait here.  (http://swparents.blogspot.com)

Where’s The Proof?

While the numbers coming in are more than double yesterday at this time, I still don’t think there’s anywhere near enough responses to warrant any real conclusions just yet, but again it does look like there are some solid trends regardless of school or age.  We just need to get more responses from a more diverse demographic.  Keep spreading the word and getting other parents to give their input.  Don’t just spread the link to parents at your own school.  You need to try to get the word outside your sphere of influence.  At least try to get it to some friends of friends, and then they should do the same.  Send it to anybody you know who has a child in the Sedro-Woolley School District.  Perhaps even send it to people you know who don’t have children in the district, but maybe they know some parents in the district that they can forward it to.

Anyway, I don’t want to leave those of you that have responded with nothing to show for it, so I’ll trickle some information to you.  Here is something interesting that is popping out.  I know with our own kids that we’ve felt the school needs to require more active responses from parents.  There are just some things that I think the schools should be certain that the parent has been notified about.  Sending a slip of paper home with a child, without requiring the youngster to bring it back signed to prove that it actually made it home, is a bit like playing Russian roulette with the kids’ education, and sometimes with their lives.  I’ve sent my kids to public school to be educated, but sometimes it feels like the schools have decided that it is their job to raise them and make important decisions for us as well.  Apparently those of you that have responded would like to make sure you know what is going on with your children too, with 100% of respondents desiring signed and returned notifications for failing overall grades as well as very high showings for behavioral issues, failing test scores, field trips by bus, and sex education. It’s also interesting to note that all of the other topics presented in the survey are holding at over 60% of responding parents wanting the school to require proof of notification.  I wonder how many of your teachers are currently requiring the signed and returned notifications you want.  I guess that will have to be on another survey.

Now let’s get more responses so we can get more statistics!  More responses overall will let us see what the trends are across the district, and if we can get more responses within each school, then I can start showing you trends within your school.  It is going to require a serious grassroots effort to spread the word though.  If nothing more, I find them very interesting.

Feel free to give your interpretations using the comment link below each post.

Mike