HOW TO RAISE SCHOOL STANDARDS? OPPOSITION TO VOUCHERS BUT SUPPORT FOR TARGETING EXTRA $s AT POOR PERFORMING SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS SERVING LOW INCOME FAMILIES

Public opinion on how to raise school standards is an intriguing mixture of conservatism and liberalism. On the one hand (see Harris Poll #14, March 14), there is strong public support for testing and accountability, key elements in President Bush’s education proposals. On the other hand, this new Harris Poll finds only minority support for school vouchers and strong support for helping rather than punishing schools that score badly in math and reading tests.

Furthermore, fully 75% of all adults favor targeting federal funds in school districts that serve many low-income families. One surprise is that not only Democrats (by 78%) support this liberal-sounding idea; fully 71% of Republicans and 79% of Independents also support it.

These are some of the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 1,008 adults surveyed by telephone between February 22 and March 3. Some of the most interesting findings of this research are:

• Attitudes to school vouchers are strongly polarized by party. The 50% to 44% plurality who oppose them includes 65% of Democrats and 55% of Independents but only 32% of Republicans. Most Republicans (62%) favor school vouchers.
  
• A massive 83% to 13% majority of the public favors providing additional funds to help raise standards in "schools which serve low income communities and which consistently score badly in reading and math tests."
  
• A 49% to 39% plurality of the public is opposed to replacing the principals of these low-performing schools; and
  
• An overwhelming 83% to 12% majority opposes closing schools like these which do badly in tests.

So much for accountability. What the public is saying, in effect, is "reward success and reward failure."

Most people (76%) believe that teachers are good judges of the quality of education in their own schools and a more modest majority (53% to 40%) believe that parents are also good judges of the quality of education in their children’s schools. However, a 54% to 41% majority does not believe that children are good judges of how well they are being educated.

This Harris Poll was conducted by telephone within the United States between February 22 and March 3, 2001, among a nationwide cross section of 1,008 adults. Figures for age, sex, race, education, number of adults and number of voice/telephone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

In theory, one can expect that 95% of surveys with samples of this size would produce results that were within plus or minus 3 percentage points of what they would be if the entire adult population had been polled using the same methods. Unfortunately, there are several other possible sources of error in all polls or surveys that are probably more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. They include refusals to be interviewed (non-response), question wording and question order, interviewer bias, weighting by demographic control data and screening (e.g., for likely voters). It is difficult or impossible to quantify the errors that may result from these factors.