Education Next published the results of its latest poll on education issues. As with all polls and studies, these results should be taken with many grains of salt. But Education Next is a serious publication and it has been conducting these polls for awhile, so its numbers are worth a serious look. For me, the most surprising result is that the support for charter schools is down, significantly. More on that, and other findings.
When Education Next first asked the charter school question in 2013, 51 percent supported charters and 26 percent opposed them. In the most recent poll, the numbers converged: 39 percent supporting, 37 percent opposed. The results held pretty steady until this year, when both sides changed about 12 percent. Why has support weakened? I have no idea, but interestingly, it’s not connected to political party. Republicans tend to like charters more than Democrats, but both groups’ support slipped by nearly the same amount. If this is a real trend which continues over the next few years, the charter movement’s growth could slow considerably.
Support for vouchers went up a bit this year, and opposition declined. Lumping together tuition tax credits and government-funded vouchers, support is about 50 percent and opposition is about 35 percent. But a funny thing happens when the question refers to the use of “government funds” to pay for the vouchers. Support drops to 37 percent, and opposition rises to 49 percent. The public likes the idea of helping people pay for private school until they realize they’re the ones footing the bill.
When it comes to people’s local schools, 54 percent gave them an A or B, which, along with last year, is the highest score since 2007 when the question was first asked. As always, national schools scored lower, with 24 percent getting an A or B—”Schools suck, except for my school” seems to be the consensus—but that’s still the high mark. For all the trash talk about public schools, they seem to be climbing in favorability.
Support for Common Core has been on a downward slide since 2013, from 65 percent to the current 41 percent, while opposition has risen from 13 percent to 38 percent. But when the term “Common Core” is left out of the question and people are asked if they support “standards for reading and math that are the same across states,” support is at 61 percent and opposition is at 20 percent. The brand has lost its luster, but apparently the public still likes the general idea.
Lots more can be found in the polling if you want to dig into the results yourself.
This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2017.
Hopefully charters will continue strong. They are the only way for poor and middle class people to get kids out of the mediocre or worse “one size fits all” government schools. Doesn’t matter if you’re rich enough to afford private schools of course.
Talk to 50 laypeople, and not one of them will know what Common Core is. It might as well be margarine – just a brand.
The EdNext poll is missing the most important number – the percentage of parents rating their child’s school excellent or the equivalent of an “A” grade.
Gallup did such a poll for 47 years but “Race to the Top” did such a wrecking job on schools that the excellence rating, the “A” grade dropped from an all-time high of 36% in 2011 to 24% in 2015.
The shock to PhiDeltaKappa was so severe that they shot the messenger, they terminated the survey.
Even a casual look at the data suggests that parents shouldn’t be policy makers for schools. After 200 years, schools are only extracting a small fraction of the potential of our poor and minority students.
So, why are we interested in their opinions on policy? Would Proctor and Gamble go to customers to ask them how to build a shampoo plant? No, but they would ask a lot of questions about shampoo quality. The EdNext survey reflects the ultimate dysfunction of our education system – it asks a ton of questions about policy and none about quality where the respondent would know best – when it is their child.
You see this vividly with TUSD. No one there has even the slightest clue as to how you use parent surveys to drive quality and achieve a competitive, winning edge. As a result, they are getting eaten alive.