Originally published on September 22, 2013.
After receiving several enticing responses on excellence in education, I thought today I should touch on “school choice.”
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a global leader in research and advocacy for educational excellence, recently published the results of their survey: What Parents Want: Education Preferences and Trade-offs. Their conclusions, albeit not earth-shattering, are highly relevant for us here in Mumbai. Mumbai has new “international” schools springing up everyday. What this means is that parents in Mumbai have a long list of schools to choose from. A shortage of schools is not what keeps parents up at night. No, what keeps a parent up at night is the decision of which school to choose. As an educator and a father I cannot think of a more important decision, in the life of a child, then what school to put them in. Think of it like this: Where do you want your child to spend the 31,000 hours of their K-12 educational experience? The answer to this question is different for every family. The right answer for a family is always about “the fit.” Parents need to ask themselves: What “type” of education is the best fit for my family and my child? And that’s what the TBF survey tried to get at. It asked parents to rank (from a comprehensive list of characteristics) “what they most valued” in an education for their children. Based on the responses the researchers identified six types of parents looking for schools. Here, in the simplest of terms, are the types:
1. Pragmatists (about 36%) believe schools should offer vocational classes or job-related programs.
2. Jeffersonians (about 24%) prefer a school that emphasizes citizenship, democracy, and leadership.
3. Test-Score Hawks (23%) look for a school that has “high test scores.”
4. Multiculturists (22%) feel learning how to work with diverse backgrounds is a priority.
5. Expressionists (15%) look to improve students’ creative skills.
6. Strivers (about 12%) identified their child being accepted to “top-tier” colleges as a priority.
If you go to http://www.edexcellence.net/ and click on “publications” you can read much more on this topic. You can even take their free online quiz to see, according to their research, what type of parent you are when it comes to expectations of a school. I took the quiz last night and was actually surprised by the results. Lisa, my wife, also took the test. We were both surprised. Our results do however help explain why we had all those ‘heated’ debates about ‘schooling’ when the boys were growing up.