A Time for Change: The 42nd Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools (Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappan International, September 2010)
This latest edition of the PDK/Gallup annual public opinion survey on American schools proves more intriguing than past installments (perhaps because they’ve added a creative thinker or two to the advisory board). In fact, many of the questions are particularly relevant to current education reform. For example, most folks believe that major education decisions should be made on the state level, including setting standards, deciding curriculum, and holding students accountable, as opposed to on the local or federal ones; but they also believe the state should be paying the lion’s share of education costs. On a more granular level, 54 percent believe the best way to deal with a poorly performing school is to flood it with outside support, as opposed to taking more drastic measures like closing it, and 68 percent are in favor of charter schools (up from just 42 percent ten years ago). Sixty percent even favor a “large increase” in the number of charters. Merit pay gets widespread support, too. Seventy-one percent believe that teachers should be paid according to their work quality, not by a standard pay scale, which trumps experience and graduate degrees. And most believe that teacher quality should be education’s top priority. But everyone’s favorite finding has remained the same (now for a quarter century): Americans tend to confer on their own local public schools as much better grade (A or B) than on schools “across the nation as a whole” (which still get a C).
