New England Students and Parents Expect More from High School

Barr’s Education Program is committed to listening to those who are at the center of our work: students who are eager to learn and grow, families who desire an excellent education for their children, and teachers and principals who support students to be successful in and beyond high school. This is why Barr partnered earlier this year with Beacon Research, a Boston-based market and opinion research firm. We wanted to build understanding of how high school students, parents, teachers and principals across New England feel about their high schools, and their ideas and priorities for improving learning experiences.

We wanted to build understanding of how high school students, parents, teachers and principals across New England feel about their high schools, and their ideas and priorities for improving learning experiences.

Beacon Research’s poll was administered online and via telephone (in English and Spanish) and ultimately generated 2,500 responses from across New England from current high school students and recent graduates, parents of high school students, high school teachers, and high school principals. The complete findings are now available on Barr’s Knowledge Center. In this post, we wanted to highlight four of the findings we were particularly struck by. They reveal a dissonance between what students and parents see as critical for success after high school and what their high schools currently provide:

Finding #1: Core academic content ranks lowest among skills that student and parents value upon high school graduation

Why is it that students and parents are not prioritizing the importance of learning and engaging with academic content? The data behind Finding #2 could be one reason.

Finding #2: Students are not satisfied with how their high school experience is connected to life after school.

A majority of students surveyed place high value on experiences that allow them to navigate opportunities and challenges that await beyond graduation. This includes exploring college and career paths, discovering their interests, deepening their expertise, and learning from local businesses and the community. Less than half of students believe that their school is delivering these opportunities well; and this relates to another key disconnect:

Finding #3: Principals and students have different perspectives on how well high school is delivering on what matters most to students.

Almost all of the principals surveyed would give their school an A or B grade on how well they are doing delivering on critical elements of high school. Students do not agree. Only about half of the students surveyed think their high schools are providing these experiences well. Finally, the data shows that there is appetite, from students and parents, to see the high school experience transformed so that success is within reach of all students.

Finding #4: Roughly 80% of students and parents believe schools need to change to provide better education for students.

Barr’s Education Program is rooted in the belief that all students can graduate high school fully prepared to thrive in college, career, and life. However, we have a long way to go to make this a reality for all students. Grantees in our Catalyze New Models portfolio work across New England to design and implement high schools that put success within reach for all students. Their experiences have taught us that the best solutions are deeply informed by the interests, experiences, and aspirations of the students and families they serve. And, in order to bring those new school models to life, teachers and school leaders must be deeply committed and aligned around a common vision.

In order to move forward in developing that vision of high quality high schools that put success within reach for all students, we all must listen to how students feel about their experiences in school today. We can learn a lot about what might need to change.

In this post, we have only pulled out some of the rich perspectives heard through the poll, and we invite you to explore the data further. You can locate the full set of data on Barr’s Knowledge Center, and we invite you to share your insights via the comments section below or by emailing our team at education@barrfoundation.org.

Explore the polling data

Published 12.19.2019