Ninety-four percent of parents responding to the 2002-03 Henrico County (Virginia) Public Schools (HCPS) parent satisfaction survey reported being “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the quality of education in the HCPS system. They’re also happy overall with the iBook program.
Henrico schools teamed with Apple and launched the Teaching and Learning Technology Initiative. iBooks were deployed to students and teachers at the beginning of the 2001-02 school year. HCPS has been named one of the Top 10 Technology Districts in the nation by the staff of District Administration magazine. An article about the Top 10 designation appears in the December 2002 edition of the publication, which notes that Henrico was chosen “because it was the first district to give Apple iBook laptop computers to every sixth- through 12th-grader.”
The Henrico survey represented the first effort to track parental satisfaction with the HCPS’s new technology initiatives, especially the provision of iBooks to all high school students in 2001. In the 2000 parent survey, 80 percent of high school parents said they were satisfied with their child’s access to technology. Responses to this question trended upward by six percentage points in 2002, with 86 percent of the high school parents who responded expressing satisfaction with their child’s access to technology.
In Henrico, 96 percent of elementary school parent respondents, 93 percent of middle school parent respondents, and 88 percent of high school parent respondents reported being satisfied with the quality of education at the public school their child attends. Parents of Henrico County schoolchildren have been surveyed every two years since 1996. The survey was conducted in the fall of 2002. More than 20,000 responses were received from parents in the HCPS.