Safety, trust, respect, fairness, high expectations, a welcoming environment—these elements add up to a positive school climate. All schools strive to create such a climate. Urban schools, especially, aspire to be safe havens for students who often face challenging family or community circumstances. How well do these schools succeed?
To answer that question, the Council of Urban Boards of Education surveyed parents in 100 urban school districts. The Council's recent report, What We Think: Parental Perceptions of Urban School Climate, is based on the responses of 10,270 parents in 112 schools at all grade levels.
Parents' feelings about their child's school, whether positive or negative, influence how deeply they get involved in school activities—and research indicates that the right kinds of parent involvement can boost student achievement. The survey results suggest that urban parents generally feel good about the learning environments their children's schools provide. The report analyzes various elements of school climate:
Safety. Most parents responding to the survey (75 percent) viewed their child's school as a safe place. But perceptions differed by ethnicity: 85 percent of white (non-Hispanic) parents and 83 percent of Asian parents said that their child's school was safe, compared with only 69 percent of black parents and 76 percent of Hispanic parents. Not surprisingly, responses also differed by grade level, with perceptions of safety decreasing as grade level increased: 88 percent of elementary school parents, 70 percent of middle school parents, and 63 percent of parents of high school students felt that their child's school was safe.
Parental involvement. Most parents (76 percent) indicated that they visited their child's school often to support activities. Among ethnic groups, white parents were the most likely to say they visited the school often (83 percent), and Asian parents were the least likely to do so (68 percent). The majority of parents (77 percent) indicated that they had attended a parent-teacher conference in the last year. Again, white parents indicated the highest rate of participation (83 percent) and Asian parents the lowest rate (71 percent).
Trust, respect, and an ethos of caring. Most parents (84 percent) said that they trusted the teachers at their child's school. Asian parents were the most likely to say that they trusted teachers (91 percent), followed by whites (88 percent); Hispanics (87 percent); Native Americans (83 percent); and blacks (79 percent). The majority of parents (87 percent) also felt that teachers respected them, but fewer (77 percent) felt that teachers respected their children. Black parents were significantly less likely than parents of other ethnicities to believe that teachers respected their child or that teachers in their child's school were fair.
Parents generally felt comfortable at school: Only 17 percent of parents agreed with the statement, "I do not feel welcomed at my child's school when I come to visit." This perception varied greatly by ethnicity, however; Hispanic parents (26 percent) were much more likely to feel unwelcome than whites (8 percent) or Asians (8 percent), and somewhat more likely to feel unwelcome than blacks (16 percent) or Native Americans (17 percent).
Importance of race. Only a small minority of parents (12 percent) believed that race was a factor in the success of students at their child's school. About 16 percent of parents agreed with the statement "There are races of children who are smarter than others." Asians and blacks were the groups most likely to agree with this statement (21 percent and 18 percent respectively). White parents (8 percent) were significantly less likely than other parents to agree that some races of children are smarter.
The survey found that when parents' primary sources of information about their child's school were teachers and administrators, their child, or their own observations, their views of the school were consistently more positive. Only a small proportion of parents indicated that they got information about their child's school primarily from newspapers and television, but those parents had much more negative views of the school's safety, respect, and expectations. This finding, says the report, reconfirms the importance of building direct, personal relationships with parents to strengthen their support and increase their involvement in their child's education.
What We Think: Parental Perceptions of Urban School Climate is available atwww.nsba.org/SecondaryMenu/CUBE/Publications/CUBEResearchReports.aspx. Also available at this address are two earlier reports in the urban school climate series, Where We Learn (which surveyed students) and Where We Teach (which surveyed teachers and administrators).
