What Parents Experience
In a Personalized Learning Public Charter School
In May of 2016, the APLUS+ Personalized Learning Network Association conducted a network-wide survey of its member school parents to discover more deeply the experiences of parents who enrolled their children in a Personalized Learning Public Charter School model and environment. Below is a summary of those survey results, along with numerous voluntary comments from hundreds of parent respondents that were offered in strong, passionate, and enthusiastic support of the Personalized Learning model and Personalized Learning Public Charter Schools. (Key survey results and optional, voluntary comments derived from more than 2,000 parent respondents from the most recent APLUS+ Personalized Learning Network Survey conducted 5/16)
Key Survey Questions and Results
What were the main reasons that your child left their previous school?
Here are the 10 top reasons chosen by the highest percentage of parents:
- School lacked individualized attention and service (43%)
- School lacked a flexible learning schedule (33%)
- School had classrooms that were too crowded (30%)
- I lost hope and trust in the school system (25%)
- School classroom learning pace did not challenge my child (25%)
- My child experienced bullying and/or intimidation by other students (20%)
- My child has special needs, interests, or circumstances that were not being met (19%)
- Teachers did not get to know and respect me or my child (18%)
- School had an unsafe learning environment (17%)
- My child fell behind in subjects, credits or grade level (14%)
Key takeaway: Parents and their children left their previous schools primarily because those schools lacked the flexible, student-centered education delivery approach provided by the Personalized Learning Public Charter School model.
What would you say are the main reasons that your child enrolled in our Personalized Learning public charter school?
Here are the 10 top reasons chosen by the highest percentage of parents:
- Freedom to learn outside of a classroom, online and/or at home (96%)
- Flexible learning schedule that allows time to do other things my child value (92%)
- More choices in learning programs and activities (88%)
- Word of mouth recommendation from someone I knew (84%)
- Parents and students are active partners in designing a personalized learning program (84%)
- Flexible pace of learning in which my child can accelerate beyond the pace of the classroom (77%)
- Teachers value and guide each individual (68%)
- Flexible pace of learning in which my child can master concepts or catch up on his/her work (68%)
- I believe that it provides a safer, more secure learning environment (65%)
- This school meets my child’s special needs, interests or circumstances better than his/her previous school (41%)
Key takeaway: A large majority of parents who responded chose a Personalized Learning Public Charter School because of the unique characteristics of the model itself, that is, freedom, flexibility, choices, parent involvement and collaborative partnerships, and the valuable relationships developed between teachers and students.
How satisfied are you with your child’s Personalized Learning public charter school program?
Here are the parents results to the survey:
- Extremely satisfied (69%)
- Very satisfied (21%)
- Satisfied (9%)
- Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (1%)
- Unsatisfied (.008%)
- Very dissatisfied (0%)
- Extremely dissatisfied (0%)
Key takeaway: 99% of parents who responded are either satisfied, very satisfied, or extremely satisfied with their Personalized Learning public charter school program!
What would you say are the main reasons you are satisfied with your child’s Personalized Learning public charter school program?
Here are the 10 top reasons chosen by the highest percentage of parents:
- The Personalized Learning plan allows flexibility (how, what, when and where my child learns) (90%)
- My child has freedom to learn outside of a classroom, online and/or at home (85%)
- Parents and students are active partners in designing a personalized learning program (81%)
- My child’s schedule is flexible and allows time for my child to do other things he/she values (81%)
- There are more choices in learning programs and activities (77%)
- My child can accelerate beyond the pace of the classroom (64%)
- It provides a safer and more secure learning environment (64%)
- Teachers value and guide each individual student (63%)
- Teachers give my child more one-on-one attention (54%)
- My child can catch up on work and succeed (50%)
Key takeaway: A large majority of parents who responded are satisfied with their Personalized Learning Public Charter School program because of the unique characteristics of the model itself, that is, freedom, flexibility, choices, parent involvement and collaborative partnerships, and teacher/student relationships.