A Comparative Study of Parent Attitudes Toward Public Education
This study was an effort to determine the collective opinion of parents of Fairview R-11 students regarding the performance and status of the teachers and administrators as Fairview R-11 School, West Plains, Missouri. A survey was given to 247 parents and the response data was compared to national opinion polls. Fairview parents gave their teachers better marks for job performance than teachers received nationally in 1985. Nearly 35% of the respondents felt local teachers' salaries were too low, and 57.8% said the base salary should be raised. Over 30% of the parents did not know the base salary for Fairview school teachers. A majority (66.6%) of the parents strongly opposed job tenure for teachers. Nearly 85% supported teacher competency testing. On the issues of public respect for teachers, 33% of the parents felt that teachers today enjoy greater public esteem than they did ten years ago, but 42.3% disagreed, and 24.5% were undecided. Although Fairview R-11 is a rural Missouri school with teaching salaries below state and national averages, parents rated the local teachers' job performance higher than did parents nationally.
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