With regard to your recent article (“As SLPS turns: Stakeholders take sides in public education crisis,” by Meliqueica Meadows, 12/7/06) concerning the statistical survey conducted for the St. Louis Public School Special Advisory Committee, I would like to explain what I believe was a misunderstanding.
Ms. Meadows said in her article that the survey sampled “40 SLPS teachers and 27 parents of district students.” She is right on those numbers, but that was only one part of the survey. Those numbers refer to randomly generated groups of parents, teachers and principals gathered for in depth conversations and also some in depth individual interviews. Those conversations helped us understand the feeling and opinions about some of the responses to the wider survey. These numbers meet academic standards for this type of opinion research.
The survey’s overall results are based on telephone interviews with more than 600 city residents selected randomly. The survey itself, the randomized selection of the actual respondents and the size of the sample meet the highest academic research standards.
Together, these two aspects of the survey work in tandem to enable our team of researchers to arrive at the conclusions we presented to the Special Committee on December 4.
It is important to note that the opinions expressed were remarkably consistent across all demographic subgroups. This kind of consensus is uncommon for opinion polling. It demonstrates that when given the opportunity to express their opinion in a systematic and scientifically valid way, the people of St. Louis spoke very clearly indeed.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. E. Terrence Jones