August 23, 2012
A recent poll conducted by Gallup PDK provided some interesting insights in how Americans see our education system. Some highlights:
- Strong Support for Common Core: 3 out of 4 Americans believe the common core standards will provide more consistency in the quality of education between school districts and states. Half of those polled believe the common core standards will improve the quality of education in their community’s schools. Worth noting that there strong support among Republicans (44%) and 73% believe it will improve consistency between states/districts.
- Good Schools Here, Just Not There: 70% of Americans think the quality of education differs from district to district – that’s a significant bump from 59% in 2001. Nearly half give schools in their community an A or B but only 19% gave schools across the country an A or B. Most (46%) gave them a C.
- Workforce Readiness: Only 54% of Americans believe that a college graduate is ready for work. That struck me as a surprisingly low number to me, perhaps reflecting the difficult job market for college graduates (more on that here, here, and here)
- Teacher Prep: 57% believe college prep programs should be more rigorous.
- Mixed Support on Teacher Evals: Mixed support on states requiring that teacher evaluations include how well a teacher’s students perform on standardized tests 52% support. / 47% are opposed. Of the 52% who favor including students’ performance on standardized tests in teacher evaluations, almost half said this should constitute between one-third and two-thirds of the teacher’s evaluation.
- Dip in Charter Support: Support for charter schools dropped to 66% from a peak of 70% last year.
- Surge in Support for Vouchers: Last year, the survey documented the lowest level of support for private school vouchers with only 34% in favor. However, this year’s approval rating jumped 10 percentage points to 44%.
- Strong Support for Choice: Seventy percent of Americans favor giving parents whose children attend a failing school the option of mounting a petition drive requesting that the teachers and principal be removed. This has greater support among Republican (76%) and independent (75%) voters than among Democrats (61%).
- Grading the President: 37% of American gave President Obama an A or a B on education and 34% gave him a D or an F. This is a big drop from 2001 when the figures were 45% and 21% respectively. Independents were more negative than positive, while Republicans were negative just 7% giving him an A or a B, and 61% a D or an F.
- Election: In terms of the election and who would be better for education, Obama leads Romney by a slight margin, 49-44; but Democrats enjoy a 12 point lead on the education question over the GOP (by 50-38), a slightly smaller lead than in ’08 (44-27) and ’04 (42-35).
- Biggest Surprise: When asked which is more important for the federal government to do in the next five years — balance the federal budget or improve the quality of the education system in the nation – 60% said balance the budget compared to 38% saying improve the quality of education. A complete flip from 1996 when only 25% said balance the budget. Surprise because normally the public wants to balance the budget but opposes cuts to most programs, including education.