Parental perceptions of school quality: factors influencing African-American parents' satisfaction with the quality and operation of Clara Mohammed schools

• Main Author: Salaam, Chandra G.
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center 2005
• Subjects: Educational Leadership
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/2287; http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3811&context=dissertations

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), brought great hopes to African-American parents that their vision for getting quality education for their children would be realized through equal access, resources, and outcomes in public schools. After 50 years of educational reforms to bring parity to traditionally underserved children, almost all of the data indicate that, on the average, public schools do not serve African- American students well. Possible evidence of the public school failure phenomena is the achievement gap between African-American and other students. The most striking response to this gross underachievement is the establishment of independent schools by African-Americans. The Clara Mohammed Schools (CMS) are independent Islamic schools established by African-American Muslims. This quantitative research used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to analyze the survey data collected from 204 parent respondents who chose CMS for their children during the 2004-2005 school year. The statistical procedures included Pearson Correlation, Frequency, Factor Analysis, and Multiple Regression. The Reliability test indicated that all ten of the survey components were reliable and constructed of similar measure. Pearson Correlation tested CMS factors and parent demographic variables. Those variables included: religion, school climate, culturally infused curriculum, academic excellence, identity (African-American), community and parent involvement, character and leadership development, affordable tuition, teacher quality, satisfaction with the quality and operation of CMS, and the parents' religion, marital status, ethnicity, gender, age range, K-12 school-type attended, income, and highest education level attained. Seven of the 10 null hypotheses were rejected indicating that parents were overall satisfied with the quality and operation of the CMS they had chosen. Multiple Regression was used to test the design model where satisfaction with the quality and operation of CMS is the dependent variable and all other variables were treated as independent variables to determine which independent variable are predictors of importance and satisfaction with the quality and operation of CMS. Character and leadership development and highest education level tend to explain satisfaction with the quality and operation of Clara Mohammed Schools significantly.