Highlights reported on two polls on public schools
How would you rate public schools, your confidence in teachers, and reforms like Common Core Standards and chartered public schools? What are the best ways to deal with budget challenges? Those are among dozens of questions two recently released polls asked a national sample of Americans. For more than 40 years, the national education fraternity “Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)” has surveyed Americans, in cooperation with Gallup Polls.
PDK members generally are public school educators and college of education faculty. Fordham Foundation, generally viewed as a conservative group, also completed and released a national survey.
The headline of PDK’s press release is “A Nation Divided.” But PDK acknowledges vigorous disagreement in some areas, and strong agreement in others. For example,
• Almost half, 48 percent, report that when they were a student in school, they were bullied. Seventy-eight percent want schools to work on reducing bullying.
• Eighty-nine percent of people think closing the achievement gap is very important or somewhat important. Eighty-four percent believe the gap “can be narrowed substantially while maintaining high standards for all children.
• Seventy-five percent of those sampled say having common core standards “would provide more consistency in the quality of education” among various schools and states. However, only 50 percent say common core standards “would improve the quality of education” in their community, 40 percent say it would “have no effect” and eight percent say it would decrease the quality of education.
• Seventy-one percent reported having “trust and confidence” in the men and women who are teaching children in the public schools.” That should encourage teachers, who in many cases bring creativity, insight and commitment to students.
• Forty-eight percent give local public schools an A or B, 44 percent would give local schools a C or D, and four percent give “fail” local public schools.
• Nineteen percent give public schools nationally an “A or B”, 70 percent give public schools nationally a C or D, and seven percent say “fail.”
Sixty-six percent support the idea of charter public schools (down from 70 percent in 2011)
• There’s no consensus about the biggest problem in public education. The most frequently cited problem was lack of financial support,” but only 35 percent cited that as the biggest problem. Sixty-two percent say they would be willing to pay more taxes “to improve the quality of the nation’s urban public schools.”
Fordham’s poll found somewhat different results. For example:
• Seventy-three percent regard local public schools as “an asset to the community.”
• However, if the local district faced a “serious financial deficit,” 48 percent suggested that the district should “cut costs by dramatically changing how it does business,” 26 percent recommended changing as little as possible and wait for times to get better and only 11 percent voted for “rely on tax increases to close the deficit.”
• The most frequently recommended budget-cutting strategy (69 percent) was to reduce the number of district level administrators.
The complete surveys are at http://www.pdkintl.org/poll/
and
www.edexcellence.net/
I’ll write a future column about what I think the results mean. If you have reactions, please send them.
Rog Bergengren
September 19, 2012 @ 9:44 am
Joe, I’ve read your and others’ commentary in the papers in Cambridge for twenty years it seems. Without revealing my inner feelings on the issue I’ll hint vaguely that the educational community in general is chock full of self-serving bovine sludge. In the gallop to justify our dismal educational outcome, administrators think to compare ourselves with ourselves. That’s animal waste. The whole ship is sinking in the middle of the ocean. What good does it do for the bow to say that it is or isn’t going down at a particular time as quickly as the stern?
If comparisons are to be taken they should be with those who clean our clocks internationally. At best we are in the middle of the pack in math and science. Some of those countries can hardly afford pencils in the classroom. What are we doing even thinking that more money points the direction out of the rabbit hole we’re in? There is only one, sure way. Motivation instilled among students.
That’s a good teacher’s greatest ability: to instill motivation. At less than top tier colleges with their first class students, it is next to impossible to have the class come away from lectures with good understanding, by the prof’s merely speaking from the lectern and working at the board. The kids have to read the book and do the work on their own. Only motivation will accomplish that.
If kids aren’t motivated to make their brains powerful, they won’t survive in the future world. Robotics and other automations have thrown millions of burger-flipping factory workers out of work in the last decades. The economy doesn’t need them anymore. It’s a shame, but there it is. But until we call spades, spades, we are doomed. It is absolutely necessary for educators to cause students to see that they will become the dregs of society, stowed away on that fast-sinking ship, if they don’t become and remain motivated to self-actualize their neurons.
But how do you do that? I can tell you how you don’t do it. A few years ago I was at a dinner gathering in the Cities where two elementary teachers were conversing about their idea of improvement to the classroom. They both agreed that homework in schools should be stopped. Until then I wasn’t paying attention. That got it. What, are these guys crack-heads? But I didn’t say anything because I liked the folks where I was.
Thomas Sowell said that theater arts majors score higher in science and math than education majors. What’s up with that? But I can believe it. As example, I asked an elementary teacher why a candle flame burns upwardly. After a while she said “I don’t know.” I don’t think I explained it – just let it go.
Do you suppose these three teachers read Kierkegaard or study P-chem on their own? Are they producing Carli Fiorinas or Larry Ellisons? Or are they just nice, well liked teachers who do what their districts seem to mandate… keep the kids happy and make sure the classroom is full come time for funding evaluation.
We can’t get off the ship until we’re sufficiently unhappy about it sinking. And from that we need captains who aren’t afraid to issue orders, both to crew and passengers.
Though I was harsh, thank you for your time,
Rod Bergengren, Cambridge
inventalot@yahoo.com