A survey (PDF) from Georgia of 754 parents of students who had received scholarships to attend private schools shows that only about one in 10 thought standardized test scores were an important factor in choosing to send their children to private schools.
The top five reasons why parents chose a private school for their children are all related to school climate and classroom management, including “better student discipline” (50.9 percent), “better learning environment” (50.8 percent), “smaller class sizes” (48.9 percent), “improved student safety” (46.8 percent), and “more individual attention for my child” (39.3 percent).
Student performance on standardized test scores is one of the least important pieces of information upon which parents base their decision regarding the private school to which they send their children. Only 10.2 percent of the parents who completed the survey listed higher standardized test scores as one of their top five reasons why they chose a particular private school for their child.
Although the survey wasn’t a push poll, it was the next worst thing: a survey where all the choices were presented to parents alongside check boxes. In other words, the survey was not a free response survey. It was therefore not scientifically conclusive. Other reasons, which survey designers had not considered before presenting the questionnaire to parents, may indeed outweigh those listed as the “top five.” The reasons given were simply the most important reasons from a pre-selected list of reasons that survey designers made up before presenting the survey to a single parent.
As a result of the above, the survey is biased by the opinions of the survey provider. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this survey, conducted by the biased Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Evidence of bias comes in the foundation’s grandiose and inaccurate mission statement: “[S]chool choice [is] the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America.”
School choice is one way to improve education in America. But it is certainly not the most effective way, and several studies have shown that school choice promotes inequity based not so much on race or socioeconomic status but on ability, contrary to the foundation’s assertion (see the book here edited by Alan R Sadovnik, Jennifer A O’Day, George W Bohrnstedt, and Kathryn M Borman).
However, the low ranking of standardized test scores on the survey gives some indication that even when test scores are presented as a choice, not too many parents pick it, compared to the other factors they consider in deciding to send their children to private schools.
