How the public feels about education issues is recorded by a stream of never-ending polls. It’s rare to have a poll ask teachers their views on a variety of education policy topics but that’s exactly what one national poll did conducted earlier this year by Morning Consult for the school choice organization, EdChoice.
Several findings from the poll about K-12 education and school choice are worth highlighting. These include:
Teachers are less optimistic than parents about K-12 education. A little less than half of all teachers (47 percent) believe education is going in the right direction on the local level. About a third of teachers (36 percent) believe education is moving in the right direction at the state level and only about 1 in 4 teachers believe it is going in the right direction nationally.
Teachers underestimate the amount of money the state spends on public schools, especially teachers at the school district level. Estimates from districts teachers on per pupil state spending ($4,500) were on average about $12,500 lower than the mean per pupil spending by states ($16,560). Estimates by private school teachers ($9,000) were about $7,600 lower than actual figures. Whereas, estimates for all teachers were about $11,500 short of the actual numbers.
Does additional information make a difference? Interestingly, when given their state’s per student spending statistic, teachers are less likely to say state spending is too low. When given this information, the percentage of district teachers who say spending is too low, declines from 73 percent (without information) to 54 percent with information. The percentage for all teachers ,declines from 70 percent (without information) to 53 percent (with information). While the percentage of teachers who say spending is “about right” climbs from 23 percent to 37 percent.
Regarding school choice policies the findings are also illuminating.
ESAs. Teachers have strong support for Education Savings Accounts or ESAs and support grows when given a description. Without a description overall teacher support for ESAs was 60 percent, with a description support grew to 75 percent. Support from private school teachers who receive information rises to 78 percent while, support from younger teachers who receive information is even higher at 81 percent).
Vouchers. Over half of all teachers (52 percent) support school vouchers. Forty percent of teachers oppose vouchers. When all teachers are given a description of vouchers, support rises to 52 percent. Support levels also increase with a description of vouchers for private school teachers (72 percent) and young teachers with 4-9 years of experience (63 percent).
Charter Schools. Almost 6 in ten teachers (58 percent) polled support charter schools, while 34 percent of all teachers oppose them. Providing a description of charter schools, boosts overall support for charters among all teachers to 58 percent. Doing the same also significantly changes support levels for teachers with four or less years of experience (65 percent) and four to nine years of experience (66 percent). Support for charter schools among private school teachers was 67 percent when teachers received no additional information and rose to 73 percent with additional information..
The poll conducted in April of this year, sampled 1,031 teachers in the United States and was weighted by age, race, ethnicity, gender and teaching experience. The poll’s margin of error is +/- 3.05 percentage points
Access the poll report here.
