Parents happy with APS

APS has published survey results, link, to illustrate the bang up job the board and senior administration are doing educating children.

The survey results are skewed by the manner in which APS conducts the survey.  Surveys are given, apparently, to every parent and about 40% are returned.  Nowhere in the results is the standard qualifier that accompanies most surveys, indicating the reliability of the results.

Take as an example; item 11;

My school has an adequate response to bullying.

I aver, the parents who completed the survey have no idea whether their school has a adequate response to bullying.  They have no idea what the bullying situation is at their school because APS hides, or does not compile at all, discipline statistics.  They deliberately conflate bullying statistics with vandalism statistics; the resulting number being a reliable measure of neither bullying nor vandalism.

Take as another example, item 1;

My child is safe at school

Because APS hides discipline statistics from interest holders, parents have no idea whether their child is safe at school.  Parents have no idea how many fist fights there are at their child's school, no idea how many weapons have been seized, and no idea how many students have been caught with drugs.  There is no aspect of school safety upon which anyone can claim to be fully informed, and therefore able to express a learned opinion.

APS spends nearly a million dollars a year creating a false public perception of the district.  What amounts to an informal survey of only parents who choose to participate, and then presented without qualification or explanation, does not reliably indicate anything at all.

The only Journal report on the survey I could find, showed up on Journal education reporter Hailey Heinz' blog, link.  She pointed to none of the flaws in the process.