This week, Phi Delta Kappa (an "honorary fraternity" of professional educators) and Gallup released their 33rd annual poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools. Normally polls bring good news or bad news, depending on which side you are on. This poll brings a combination of no news and confusing news.
One way to insure that a poll does not provide much useful information is to frame questions so they force respondents to choose between alternatives that aren't really alternatives - to create a false dichotomy. This year's Kappan/Gallup poll asks people which they'd prefer, reforming the existing public school system OR finding an alternative to the existing public school system. If you like the idea of creating alternatives to the existing system because you think this is the best way to cause improvement in the system, you're out of luck.
What's especially puzzling is what the reader is supposed to think about the broadest question of all - whether today's public schools are any good. The heading of the lead figure in the "policy implications" section of the poll proclaims "Public Support for Local Public Schools Is at an All-Time High." That may be true, but only 51% of the population surveyed (and 62% of public school parents) would give their local public schools a grade of A or B. A thoughtful consumer of polls could be either dismayed that so many parents are sending their children to schools that they think are worth no better than a C, or alarmed that so many parents erroneously think their kids' schools are fine when so many hard indicators (e.g. NAEP and TIMSS results) show that they aren't.
If one thing is clear from the Kappan/Gallup poll, it's that Americans believe that President Bush's education plan is on the right track. By a margin of 49 to 33 (and 51 to 44 among public school parents), people also think Bush "will do a better job of school improvement than President Clinton." If only Congress had seen these numbers before it started dismembering Bush's proposal.
To download or view a copy of the 33rd Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, go to http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0109gal.htm or call Terri Hampton for a copy at 812-339-1156.
To read a more detailed analysis of the poll from the Center for Education Reform, go to http://www.edreform.com/press/2001/pdkpoll.htm