Parents Maintain Faith in Underperforming Schools

Parents Maintain Faith in Underperforming Schools

WASHINGTON – Phi Delta Kappa has released the 39th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. The annual poll reports on the public's perception of the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 on the nation's education system and various strategies for improving the achievement of all students.

According to the report, the vast majority of the public wants underperforming schools to improve. Only 26 percent of the public want the focus to be on finding alternatives to existing underperforming public schools.

"NCLB helped raise public awareness of the performance of public schools," said M. René Islas, Vice President of B&D Consulting's education services team. "Despite this awareness, the public and parents are unwilling to give up on persistently underperforming schools."

NCLB calls for states to establish accountability systems and to identify schools that are in need of improvement. Persistently underperforming schools are then required to progress through an escalating set of sanctions ranging from offering public school choice to completely reconstituting the school.

"It is essential that the reauthorization of NCLB focuses on building capacity for improved school performance while continuing the existing strategies of giving students educational options," said Islas. "School leaders need effective ways of diagnosing deficiencies in school performance, developing an effective school improvement plan with research based interventions, and receiving structured support for executing the plan."

Prior to leading B&D Consulting's education services team, Islas served as the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Education. He managed the overall operations, policy development and administration of programs within the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, particularly programs within the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Islas advised on the implementation of NCLB and oversaw the department's compliance monitoring of the highly qualified teacher provisions of NCLB. He also advised and supported the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

B&D Consulting's education services team provides multidimensional consulting service to clients ranging from school support team services, government relations and advocacy, compliance support, and education business consulting.