My current business partner Bill Bosher and former colleague Cary Funk have released an interesting survey about charter schools and other education-related issues.
Here are some of the most useful findings.
CHARTERS
Most Virginians haven’t heard very much about them (just goes to show you how difficult it is for most campaign messages to sink in). But when offered a neutral description of what a charter school is, Virginians support them by a more than 2 to 1 margin. Interestingly, there is not majority support for changing the state constitution to make it easier for charters to be approved in the Commonwealth. Overall, there’s strong baseline support for McDonnell’s endorsement of charters, but the administration has some work to do in fully educating Virginians about them.
TEST SCORES AND TEACHER PAY
A majority of Virginians believe that basing part of a teacher’s saalary on test scores will help retain quality teachers. At the same time, a majority opposes a simple formula that would pay teachers more whose students received higher test scores.
The results make a lot of sense to me. Citizens want merit to be considered in setting teacher’s pay. But they also recognize that measuring teacher success is a complicated matter. It might depend, for example, on what “higher” test scores means. It’s one thing to look at improvements in test scores and quite another to simply look at absolute scores, measures that will invariably favor those who are teaching relatively privileged children.
MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS
I was fascinated by the internals on the test scores/teacher pay issue. Virginians from lower income brackets are less likely to support a simple equation of test scores and higher pay than those from higher ones (who wouldn’t want to ensure that their teachers aren’t penalized because they’re working in more economically challenging circumstances?)
Most fascinating of all, 29% of women support the simple formula while 58% of men do. You can almost hear the men and women of Virginia each saying “What in the world are they thinking?”
FORGET TENURE
A 48% to 37% plurality opposes offering tenure to teachers. In a private sector environment where everyone’s job is vulnerable, tenure becomes less understandable to those who aren’t in the system.
CARING VIRGINIA
k-12 Education along with Jobs and the Economy continue to rank the highest among Virginians’ issue priorities. Two of the biggest concerns of policy-makers- Transportation and Higher Ed- fail to draw the kind of support in rankings of what Virginians would consider paying higher taxes to accomplish. What may be most surprising is that a couple of safety net issues- Mental Health Services and Aid to Low Income Families- rank higher at the moment that transportation and higher ed. With a tough economy, Virginians may want to ensure that the most vulnerable don’t get hurt even more.
Not a bad sentiment for the holiday season.
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