Support for renewing No Child Left Behind with minimal changes is down from a year ago, from 57 percent to 50 percent, according to a brand new poll by Education Next (where I serve as executive editor). Confidence in public schools is also dipping, particularly among minority groups, with just 20 percent of African-Americans giving the schools an A or B--down from 27 percent last year. And both African-Americans and Hispanics express significantly greater faith in local police departments than in local public schools. (This is true for whites too, though to a lesser degree.) So the next time the Phi Delta Kappan reports that Americans love their public schools, keep in mind that they love their police departments even more.
As for whom the public trusts to fix the schools, the Democrats have re-opened their wide lead on the issue. From the press release:
- Sixty-one percent of respondents rate the Democrats' record on education more favorably, and 62 percent think them more likely to improve the public schools.
- Teachers prefer the Democrats by even larger margins, as do Hispanics and African Americans.
- Democrats and Republicans both tend to favor members of their party when it comes to education, but they do so with varying levels of conviction. Whereas self-identified Democrats prefer their own party on education by margins of roughly 10 to 1, Republicans do so by margins of just 3 to 1. This marks a departure from the pattern observed in 2000, when polls compiled by political scientist Patrick McGuinn showed that only 44 percent of Americans thought that the Democrats would do a better job of improving education, compared with 41 percent who favored the GOP in this area. The Education Next-PEPG 2008 findings reveal a return to the patterns seen in the 1980s and 1990s, when voters consistently favored the Democrats on education by margins of 20 percentage points or more.
President Bush set out to improve America's public schools--and to ensure that his Republican Party got credit for it. According to the public at least, he failed on both counts.
