Dive Summary:
- A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows that an 82% majority of U.S. parents like their children's teachers—only 5% rated teachers as poor.
- Elementary school teachers had the highest ratings, with 87% of elementary parents calling their child's teacher excellent or good—compared to 77% of middle school parents and 78% of high school parents approving of their child's teacher.
- The poll gathered further insight with a list of open-ended questions, asking parents who gave teachers positive scores to say what made their child's teacher great; many of the answers were related to attentiveness or being a good communicator.
From the article:
... Parents' answers were collected word-for-word, then coded into categories to get a better sense of which traits in particular garnered the most frequent mentions.
At the top of many parents' lists were traits related to attentiveness to students, presentation style or being a good communicator. Overall, 35 percent of parents mentioned the teacher's paying attention to their students' needs, 22 percent cited factors related to presentation style, 12 percent mentioned communication skills and 10 percent an overall positive attitude or personality. ...
