Americans Support New National Education Legislation

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Results of the 34th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools were released today in Washington, D.C. A core measure in this research is the public's assessment of the quality of public education. The 2002 survey finds little change in this evaluation over the past year. Parents continue to give high marks to the schools their own children attend, while the public at large offers more mixed reviews of the public schools in its communities and is generally critical of the nation's public schools as a whole.

One of the major events in the field of education this year was the enactment of the federal education initiative known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA). This legislation, sponsored by President Bush and passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, establishes an unprecedented role for the federal government in requiring the states to establish curriculum standards and tracking of students through regular testing. The Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup survey suggests that Americans welcome this increased federal involvement in local education.

The survey of 1,000 national adults touches on a wide variety of other current issues in public education, including school vouchers, charter schools, student testing, and the apparent achievement gap between white and minority students. Interviews were conducted by telephone from June 5-26, 2002.

Details

• Americans' perceptions of public education vary depending upon respondents' closeness to the schools in question. Seven in 10 parents of public school children give the school their oldest child attends a grade of either A (27%) or B (44%). Just under half of national adults give an A (10%) or a B (37%) grade to the public schools in their local communities. But only one in four Americans give an A (2%) or a B (22%) to public schools in the nation as a whole.

• While relatively few Americans give the public schools at any level a D or failing grade, a total of 47% give their local public schools a grade of C or less, and 63% rate the nation's public schools this poorly.

• Americans' current assessment of public education is similar to what the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll has shown in recent years. Ratings of public schools in the local community were somewhat lower during the 1980s (with an average of 39% of Americans grading them an A or a B, compared with 47% today). But since the mid-1990s, the ratings for all three dimensions of public education have been stable at roughly the current level.

Percentage Grading the Public Schools "A" or "B"

• In reference to the NCLBA, a majority of Americans (57%) say that an increase in the federal government's involvement in local public school affairs will be a good thing for public schools in their local communities. Just one-third (34%) see this as a bad thing. Nine percent are unsure.

• Support for federal involvement in local education is higher among nonwhites than among whites (70% vs. 55%), and higher among Democrats than among Republicans (63% vs. 53%). But the sharpest distinctions are seen by age, with support for federal involvement high among young adults, but lower among older age groups.

• Two-thirds of Americans (67%) favor the specific NCLBA provision that requires states to track the progress of students in grades 3 to 8, based on an annual test; just 31% oppose it. Support for this provision is equally high among public school parents and adults with no children in public school.

• Americans would go even further than the NCLBA in establishing national performance standards. The new legislation gives each state discretion in establishing its own standards and tests, but a substantial majority of Americans say it would be best to require all 50 states to use a nationally standardized test.

• The NCLBA has set a deadline of the 2013-14 school year for public schools to achieve a 100% success rate for students on proficiency exams, or face various penalties. Most Americans are fairly confident that this goal can be achieved: 31% say it is very likely and another 49% say it is somewhat likely. Just 18% say it is not very or not at all likely.

• The NCLBA has a number of provisions aimed at putting a "highly qualified teacher" in every public school classroom by 2005. More than nine in 10 Americans seem to agree with the specific provision that teachers must be licensed by the state in the subject areas they teach. Eighty percent say this is very important and 16% say it is somewhat important.

• Similarly, 96% of Americans believe that before being licensed, public school teachers should be required to take statewide competency tests in the subjects they will teach.

Survey Methods

These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,000 national adults, 18 years and older, conducted June 5-26, 2002. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.