New Poll Uncovers Ethnic Minority Parents' Great Expectations
Feature Story by Stephanie Somerman - 9/22/2006
New Poll Uncovers Ethnic Minority Parents' Great ExpectationsMinority parents are often perceived as not holding or fostering high expectations when it comes to their children's performance in public schools.
A New America Media (NAM) poll released on August 23 challenges the validity of this impression. NAM's poll, Great Expectations, focuses on pre- and post-education and shows minority parents' expectations ranked among the status quo of all American parents.
In addition, the survey shows Asian American, African American and Latino parents are willing and active participants in their children's education. A little over 83 percent of parents recalled meeting with their child's teachers on numerous occasions and most reported helping students with their homework nightly.
"[Parents] could become an important source of pressure to raise achievement levels in public schools in California," said NAM Executive Director Sandy Close.
"This poll shows that parents are the greatest ally minority students have in the fight for better education," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). Henderson said the poll results indicate that minority parents could be strong proponents for school reform. "By setting the bar high, parents are challenging students in a way the public school system has not recognized and utilized to raise outcomes for minority students."
Although the poll represented a variety of socio-economic and demographic variations, the findings showed a gap in what parents expect and what they encounter.
While only 35 percent of those polled recalled receiving any type of early childhood education themselves, 86 percent disagreed with the claim that children under five are too young to be attending any type of school program. More than half of parents thought there was affordable child care or day care centers in their neighborhood, but only 30 percent of those with children under the age of five actually had them enrolled.
Observers said that the poll establishes that minority parents' aspirations for their children's education start at a young age. As Khalil Abdullah, NAM's Washington D.C. director, said of minority parents: "The effort to confront low expectation is a process of 'decolonization of the mind.'"
The findings reflect how different minority groups view the quality of the public school system.
Most Latino parents reported schools as "excellent to good" compared to 62 percent of Asian and African Americans who rated schools as "mediocre to poor". "The great majority want a high school diploma to stand for something," said pollster Sergio Bendixen.
Additionally, when asked about the biggest problem facing California today, Latinos named a lack of affordable housing while African American and Asian parents said it was poor quality public education.
This was the first education poll to provide questions in languages other than English.
Participants could choose to be interviewed in English, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese or Vietnamese. Of the 602 people polled - which included 201 Latinos, 201 Asian Americans and 200 African Americans - 50 percent of Asians and 26 percent of Latinos chose to be interviewed in a language other than English.
"This poll, like many others we've commissioned, proves how important it is to survey these groups in their own languages," said NAM's Close.
