Six out of 10 parents hope their child will attend college, according to a new survey by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation.

The survey, conducted in June, comes out at a time when the value of a college degree is the subject of public debate.

“We hear all this skepticism of higher education,” said Courtney Brown, vice president of impact and planning for the Lumina Foundation, which advocates for opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. “We hear the narrative that people don’t value it.” 

Just last month, the results of a Gallup poll showed that confidence in higher education among Americans  over the last decade.

But the results of actually asking what parents want for their own children, Brown said, are striking. This is the first survey that Gallup has specifically asked parents for their views on the topic.

“When it comes down to it, it’s pretty clear that parents hope their children get a college degree,” Brown said.

Brown has found that parents’ biggest concerns about higher education tend to be the cost, whether it leads to a job, or increasingly, whether it is political.

This may explain why community colleges were a popular option among parents who responded. Community colleges tend to have a much lower sticker price than four-year colleges, and there is a greater emphasis on job credentials. Roughly 1 out of 5 parents of varying backgrounds said that they would like to see their child enroll at a community college. 

But there were some notable differences in the survey among parents, depending on their own level of education, but especially their political orientation.

The strongest narratives against higher education come from the Republican Party. That is reflected in the responses, Brown noted.

Greater differences emerged around whether students should enroll in a four-year college immediately after high school; 58% of college graduates and 53% of Democrats preferred sending their children straight to a four-year college, compared to 27% of Republicans and 30% of parents without a college degree.

Republicans are more likely to say that their children should go straight into the workforce or job training or certification, followed by independents and those without a college degree. Other options include taking time off or joining the military. 

But overall, 4 out of 10 parents want to see their child attend a four-year college or university, making it the most popular option by far. This is something that comes up repeatedly in surveys about higher education.

“We see that people value four-year [degrees],” Brown said. “We see that people have trouble accessing it and have some concerns about the system, but they do greatly value it.”

The survey also measured the preferences of non-parents. It asked respondents to think about a child in their life, whether a nephew or niece, grandchild or family friend under 18 who has not graduated from high school. Responses were remarkably similar: 55% said they wanted this child to attend either a four-year or two-year college, compared to 59% of parents.

This was originally published by .

The school, which serves 400 students pre-kindergarten through second grade in Maryland’s Baltimore City Public Schools, is rethinking the way it operates to boost parental involvement, said first-grade teacher Kaylah Crawford.

Crawford, who is in charge of family engagement at Arundel, said every student will lead their own parent-teacher conference this year, giving their families a glimpse of what they do in the classroom.

“Students will be leading their conferences by saying, ‘This is what I’m doing in school’ and then parents will be able to see (their child’s work) firsthand,” Crawford said. “It’s more engaging for families to hear from the student about how they’re performing.”

Parent perception of their child’s educational progress is tricky for many schools around the nation. A recently released national study has unveiled there’s a stark gap between parents’ knowledge of their child’s performance in school and their actual achievement in the classroom.

released in November by Gallup and the nonprofit Learning Heroes, surveyed roughly 2,000 parents of K-12 public school students nationwide about their experiences with and perceptions of their child’s educational achievement.

What researchers found was that parents don’t have a complete understanding of their child’s progress, said Bibb Hubbard, founder of , a national parent advocacy organization.

Nearly 9 out of 10 parents surveyed believe their child is performing at grade level in reading (88%) and math (89%) despite standardized tests showing far fewer students are on track. showed that at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, public schools reported on average half of their students were below grade level.

“We just can’t afford to leave parents on the sidelines right now. We absolutely don’t have 9 out of 10 students performing at or above grade level, unfortunately,” Hubbard told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “We need to give parents more information.”

The study also found that nearly two-thirds of parents (64%) said report cards — often considered the “holy grail” of measurements, Hubbard said — were important in determining whether their child is at grade level. And for 79% of parents surveyed, those report cards showed their children getting mostly B grades or better.

Hubbard said oftentimes, good grades equal “on grade level” for parents.

“That’s because they’ve not been told otherwise,” she said. “Grades don’t necessarily reflect grade-level mastery. You can also have your fourth grader getting an A or B in reading and that’s because they are reading at a second-grade level and they are getting B’s on their quizzes at a second-grade level.”

Crawford said her building principal strives to be transparent with parents about grades, but recently it has become more evident that some students complete homework without understanding all of the content.

“(Turning in finished homework) doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re able to read or even always able to complete work independently,” Crawford said. “So one of the things that we’ve done to target some of those discrepancies is starting different family programming.”

Arundel Elementary School launched a program called Family University in December, Crawford said. Parents can communicate with school staff to learn more about what’s happening in the classroom. They will also get feedback about what their child needs to work on academically.

“We learned through every program that we have within the building that the goal is to teach the parents something that would better prepare them to have a scholar within the school system,” Crawford said.

When parents are more informed about their child’s academic progress, they are more likely to take action and discuss concerns with their child’s teacher, Hubbard said.

The study found that 97% of parents who know their child is below grade level in math are worried about their child’s math skills. Only 22% of the parents who knew their child was at or above grade level in math were concerned about their child’s math skills.

Parents were also asked about what worries they have about their children.

“For the parents who perceive their child to be at or above grade level, their top worries are social media and emotional well-being … reading and math fall to the very bottom of their worries,” Hubbard said. “For those parents who have information that their child is not performing at grade level, their number one worry is math or reading.”

Researchers also unearthed racial differences in parents’ perceptions of how well their child was doing in school. The study introduced a hypothetical scenario to participants where their child receives a B in math but has two below-grade-level math test scores. While more than half of parents (56%) said they would be very or extremely concerned, Black parents were more likely to say they would be concerned (72%) compared with Hispanic (56%) and white parents (52%). 

Black and Hispanic parents were also more aware of their child’s academic performance in the study, Hubbard said.

Black (42%) and Hispanic (40%) parents were found less likely than white parents (54%) to say their child was performing above grade level in reading, with a similar finding in math. 

Contradicting that Black parents don’t care about their child’s education, Hubbard said, “Black parents in particular are taking more action, thinking and more deeply worrying. The Black parent in this dataset really emerges as the super active parent that’s really focused on academics.”

Lakisha Young, co-founder of Oakland REACH, a parent empowerment group that recently launched a large-scale parent-led tutoring program, said Black parents in Oakland have been more aware that something isn’t right with their child’s achievement, but they don’t know what to do about it.

“They’re definitely plugged in around something not being right,” Young said. “We asked our parents what was keeping them up at night and they just said, ‘I know my child’s not reading on the level they should be. But I’m not really getting a lot of help from the school to figure out the best thing for me to do to move forward.’ ”

The parent perception problem in education is solvable, Hubbard said — parents need to look beyond their child’s grades and engage with teachers to get to the bottom of their achievement.

“Teachers say that the number one way to know how your child is achieving is to ask them,” Hubbard writes in the study. “Asking teachers to unpack those factors and focus on grade-level learning is how to know where to lean in and help.”

Young said when her own son is struggling in his eighth-grade classes, he’s not the one to inform her — his teachers are. 

“I think things that continue to be helpful for families is to be able to feel like they can engage with the school and I think it really starts with building a relationship early,” Young said. “Kind of (letting) the school know, ‘I’m here, I’m accessible. I care. I want to understand these things about what’s going on with my kid.’ ”

Learning Heroes has been working to boost parent engagement across the nation, most recently with its campaign. The campaign partners with local nonprofits to connect parents with teachers and helps them understand achievement scores, among other resources. 

In addition to the national project, Go Beyond Grades has local campaigns, most recently launched in St. Louis, Missouri, but is also in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Houston, Boston and Sacramento.

“Grades are important, but we need to unpack that a little bit and get some additional information about how your child is doing,” Hubbard said. “The call to action is pretty simple.”

Disclosure: The Carnegie Corporation of New York provides financial support to Learning Heroes and ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ.