Customer Service

I read two interesting articles lately. They both came from Washington, DC. The first one was an announcement that the mayor had taken over the school system, fired the chancellor and installed a woman who had years of business experience but essentially no experience in education. This woman was recommended by Joel Klein.

The second article was on research done on the voucher program that exists to some extent in D.C. The researchers had discovered that the parents of students who had received vouchers reported that they were very satisfied with their children's school. They felt their child was safer and was learning more. The children according to the researcher were not in fact learning more, and the kids themselves did not feel safer.

I think that these two articles are related. First of all they tap into a great deal of dissatisfaction with the educational system. Politicians have been saying that the solution to education is to privatize it or at least use private techniques to gain control. What they have realized is that there are large numbers of people who are not satisfied with the schools. This is particularly true in cities. The voucher research generally proved that parents who perceived they had a choice were more satisfied.

The school I am currently in has a very vocal, very active PA. Students need to apply to the school to attend. My guess is that parents are generally satisfied with the school because they feel they have a voice. They are the kind of people who are used to being listened to and the principals need to listen even when it is not pleasant. This school has good customer relations.

My last school probably falls into the category of schools in which parents are not satisfied. I am actually not completely blaming them for this. For one thing the parents come in with the feeling that no one will listen to them so they don't really try. The system has spent years essentially telling them that they don't matter. In general the school system has treated them badly. The schools have done a bad job of explaining what was going on in the schools. When we change how we teach kids we rarely talk to parents about it. Most of our contact with parents is to tell them how bad their kid is. We rarely have an honest conversation with them about the issues surrounding their children. Open school night is filled with discussions about how much homework a kid did, or how they did on tests. It is not a discussion on what there kids need to work on, what there deficits are, what their strengths are.

I sat in a meeting once in which the mother of a student accused of some offense was defending her daughter. After the meeting the teacher mentioned to me that she was surprised that the mother would defend her kid. I told her that I thought that that was the mother's job. NYC teachers are not used to dealing with middle class parents with middle class attitudes. We are very poor at customer relations. If we were running a business we would no longer be in business. It would not matter if we had a good or a bad product. Our perception is so bad no one would believe us if we were doing a good job. Ford recently did a survey in which it discovered that people thought the Ford Focus was a great car. Those who compared felt it was better than a Toyota. The same people also said they wouldn't but the Ford. Ford knows it has years of doing badly to make up before people will trust it. Educators have the same problem.

Todays Quiz: What shirt am I wearing in the above picture?