Voters optimistic on public schools

Half of Americans believe public schools have improved — a 12 percentage-point increase in public optimism from last year — but a majority think the schools need to improve more, a new poll finds.

The survey of 1,005 registered voters commissioned by the National Education Association (NEA) — and conducted by a bipartisan polling team — found that for the first time in four years, more Americans have a positive view of public schools than have a negative view.

The poll found 10 percent who said “public schools are in good shape,” 40 percent who “believe the schools have improved and need to continue to do so,” while 24 percent said “public schools are in bad shape but have started to improve” and another 24 percent said schools “are in bad shape and not improving.”

Almost two-thirds of those participating in the poll commissioned by the 2.7 million-member teachers union said the federal government should spend more than last year’s $61 billion appropriated for nine federal education programs, while 30 percent said spending should be about the same and 7 percent want less federal education spending, Democratic pollster Al Quinlan said in a briefing at NEA headquarters in Washington.

The NEA harshly has criticized the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, enacted two years ago, but the poll found “broad support for testing and accountability” required by the law to measure student achievement in reading and mathematics, said Mr. Quinlan of Greenberg Quinlan Research.

The survey found 42 percent either had not heard of NCLB or were unsure of its impact, while 37 said the law is having a positive impact and 21 percent said it is having a negative impact.

Broken down by political party, Republicans overwhelmingly have a positive view of NCLB, by a 4-to-1 margin, while Democrats lean slightly in favor of the law (33 percent positive to 26 percent negative) and independents are divided about evenly.

Republican pollster Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group said the poll demonstrated “a tremendous push” for education, which voters see as a needed federal-state partnership and “a top-tier budget priority.”

“There is a belief here that this is an area where government is improving things,” Mr. Goeas said. “The public is more optimistic about public schools than they have been in the last five years.”

Mr. Goeas said the poll did not validate the union’s insistence on changes in the act, which NEA President Reg Weaver again criticized yesterday for its “rigid one-size-fits-all requirements” that he said impose more unwanted “bureaucracy, paperwork and too much standardized testing” on schools.

As school districts across the country have been “hammered by state and local cutbacks,” Mr. Weaver renewed his complaint about “the alarming gap between federal funding of public education and the real needs of children nationwide.”

“Serious changes need to be made in the law to reach our goal of leaving no child behind,” he said.

The NEA issued a separate report prepared by a Bethesda consultant, Fiscal Planning Services Inc., which said the administration and Congress should more than double federal education spending — to $142.1 billion a year — to achieve “full funding” of nine programs, including education aid for disadvantaged children.

The report said the federal “funding gap” for the programs was $81.4 billion in fiscal year 2003, or $20.7 billion more than the total amount spent.

Eugene Hickok, the Education Department’s acting deputy secretary, called the NEA’s spending analysis “a rather stunning argument — stunning, as in ludicrous.”

He said it was time to “stop talking about spending,” because the states have almost $6 billion in unspent federal funds in the U.S. Treasury appropriated as far back as fiscal 2000.