The Phi Delta Kappan and the pollsters at Gallup this week unveiled their 36th annual survey of public attitudes toward schooling. The yearly late-August release of this poll is treated as an event of some importance to education writers across the country, who are sure to get a few weeks of chin-stroking and editorializing out of its data. Fordham and others take this poll to task each year for the way it asks questions about vouchers (click here), which generally poll in the 40-45 percent approval range. Ask the question in other ways, though, and support for vouchers rises - a point made this year by a competing poll by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation. We won't rehash our objections to question bias in the PDK/Gallup poll here, except to note that we are obliged to register them once again.
In general, though, the PDK/Gallup poll probably does a decent job of mirroring public attitudes toward education. That assertion may surprise some readers, since these survey responses are often blurry and even contradictory. For example:
- Seventy-three percent of the public believes that it is "not possible to accurately judge a student's proficiency in English and math on the basis of a single test," but 51 percent supports high-stakes graduation tests and a strong plurality (40 percent) think there's just about the right emphasis on achievement testing, while 22 percent think there's not enough. (And a whopping 83 percent want testing in other subjects besides English and math!)
- Twenty-four percent of the public has a generally favorable view of NCLB, 20 percent generally unfavorable, and 55 percent are clueless. But 51 percent believe the law will improve education "a great deal" or "a fair amount."
- Eighty-eight percent of the public thinks it is important to close the racial achievement gap - but only 42 percent support disaggregating achievement data by race and other characteristics.
- Only 42 percent of the public favors "allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense" while 54 percent oppose. But 43 percent of the public would be more likely to support a pro-voucher candidate, only 37 percent less likely.
- And of course, the perennial head-scratcher of public education: 70 percent of respondents with children in school give the school their oldest child attends an A or B, but only 47 percent would give schools in their community the same grades, and a mere 26 percent would give schools nationwide top marks.
In their rather terse conclusion, the pollsters insist that "The public does . . . have a way of getting it right with issues that are both complex and puzzling," an oddly defensive posture. Its tone may reflect the fact that Gallup doesn't know what in blazes to do with this mess of data, either - and that Phi Delta Kappa is a "stakeholder" group with deep roots in the education status quo.
But again, the PDK/Gallup poll is probably a reasonable representation reflection of public attitudes toward education, insofar as Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. (It's not a uniquely American failing; Europeans, after all, want huge welfare states, low birth rates, productive economies, and six weeks of vacation per year.) We want high test scores and high standards, but gosh, isn't all this testing a bit much? We want consequences for failure for everybody but my kid. Yes, public schools are a mess - those public schools, not this public school that my kids attend. And yes, let's close the racial achievement gap, it's the moral thing to do - but let's not report test scores by race, which is the only way to know if the achievement gap is closing or widening.
Like the White Queen, Americans can believe six or more incompatible things about public education before breakfast, because nothing has ever forced them to choose between competing goods. What might be bringing us to the point of decision is No Child Left Behind, in its lumbering and occasionally goofy way. This month and next, as states report their initial testing data and provisional AYP results are released for 2003-4, we are getting closer to widespread enactment of some of the more draconian NCLB interventions, including school restructurings and conversions. And the list of schools not making AYP is likely to lengthen this year (in North Carolina, for example, it just jumped from 18 to 156 schools). As more schools are labeled in need of improvement and as restructuring becomes more common, it grows harder for the public to sustain the illusion that all the pain of an accountability system can be for thee and not me, for your school and not mine. Will the public decide that the potential achievement gains that can result from NCLB's interventions and services (or a like alternative) are worth the disruption of testing and accountability? Or will we stick our heads in the sand about the problems that NCLB's assessment regimen lay bare?
If the PDK/Gallup poll shows anything, it's that Americans haven't yet fully digested what high standards, rigorous assessment, and serious accountability for results might mean, much less what a choice among schools might mean. That is, I think, the real lesson of the poll: that our opinions about education are no more contradictory than the goods we desire.
Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, by Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, Phi Delta Kappan and Gallup, Inc, August 23, 2004
"National study raises questions of bias in Phi Delta Kappan poll," Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, August 20, 2004
"From schools to security, a reluctance to fix blame," by Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 2004
"Public's views on schools a moving target, poll finds," by Ben Feller, Associated Press, August 24, 2004