PDK Poll on Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

I recently discovered that Bill Jackson, founder and president of GreatSchools.net and occasional participant on the sfschools list, has a blog. His latest post is an interesting review of the 38th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools Here are some highlights from his review:

While 56% of public school parents gave the public schools in their community an A or a B, only 21% of public school parents gave an A or B to the public schools in the nation as a whole. What's going on here? Are parents viewing their own schools through rose-colored glasses? Or are they being led to believe by the media that public schools "everywhere else" are a mess?

The pollsters asked: "Which is most at fault for the problems currently facing public education in this community — the performance of the local schools or the effect of societal problems?" Of the respondents, 22% blamed the schools, while 70% blamed "societal problems." While 85% of parents think it is "very important" or "somewhat important" to close achievement gaps among groups of students, they are evenly split over whether it is the responsibility of schools to do so.

Parents oppose vouchers while supporting charter schools. While they are concerned about the impact of testing, they believe students should be required to pass an exit exam in order to graduate[...]

And a final interesting tidbit: while 26% of respondents say that the federal No Child Left Behind Act is "helping" schools and 21% say it is "hurting" schools, a substantial 37% say that it is "making no difference." Could it be so?

One nugget from the PDK poll that jumped out at me is that public is not buying into the hype that public schools are in decline. The closer they are to an actual school, the higher their regard for public schools.

My conclusion is that the public makes its decisions about the public schools based on those it knows best, its local schools. People out there in the communities like their schools. They hear the criticism leveled at public schools in general but are unaffected because those are someone else's schools. They care in the abstract, but it is their local schools that draw their interest and can evoke their support.

That jibes with what I have observed in San Francisco. Families with kid in SFUSD schools have a much better opinion of SFUSD schools than other families with no kids or kids in private schools.