The survey from The Leadership Conference Education Fund, the education research arm of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, shows that 83 percent of African-American parents and 61 percent of Latino parents reject the notion their communities receive as much education funding as white communities. And more than two-thirds of African-American parents, or 66 percent, say the quality of education provided to black children is not as good as it is for white children.
“This sense of racial inequity creates a good deal of resentment among African Americans in particular, a majority of whom say schools are not doing a good job nationally of preparing black children for the future,” said Matt Hogan, partner with Anzalone Liszt Grove Research. The public opinion research firm helped conduct the survey of 400 African-American and 400 Latino parents and families of public school students to analyze their attitudes about and expectations of their children’s schools.
The results are particularly significant because the majority of students in U.S. public schools are minority students – a threshold crossed last year – and the number of students of color is only expected to grow.
“Both of these communities, African-American and Latino parents and families, are acutely aware of the racial inequities in schools and the negative impact they have on students of color,” Hogan said on a press call.
Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the poll’s aim is to capture the beliefs of African-American and Latino parents and families so that policymakers can make better choices about the education for all students, but especially for the growing number of students of color. It comes on the heels of a new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which shrinks the footprint of the federal government and hands more control over public schools to states and local school districts.
“New law is a step away from the type of federal accountability I would like to see,” Henderson said. “But it does enhance public involvement, state engagement and gives a level of transparency for how we advocate for change.”
Among many other things, the new law allows states to create their own accountability systems to hold schools and districts responsible for educating all subgroups of students, including students of color, for closing achievement gaps, and for fixing the worst schools.
Racial disparities in education are particularly strong among African-American parents and families, 53 percent of whom the poll shows believe the U.S. is not doing a good job educating black students.
When it comes to what they see as most important in making a great school, African-American parents and Hispanic parents overwhelmingly cited the quality of teachers in response to an open-ended question.
And when asked to rate different school characteristics by importance, academic options such as having the right teaching materials and students leaving the school prepared for college or a career matched teacher quality at the top, with over 90 percent of both communities rating each as very important.
“There is some resistance of the sense that students today are being pushed a little too hard,” Hogan said. “There is no sense of that among African-American and Latino parents.”
In fact, 90 percent of African-Americans and 84 percent of Latinos disagree that students today work hard enough and instead believe that students should be challenged more in school.
They also strongly reject the notion that students from low-income families should be held to lower standards, with 90 percent of both African-Americans and Latinos saying they believe expectations for low-income students should be either the same or higher than those of other students.
“They have political power that they can bring, especially now with the [new] transparency under ESSA,” Henderson said. “It will [increase] their political impact and potential, but it also means they have to be organized. We hopes this information helps us to educate families, communities and parents.”
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