Americans' confidence in public schools is down five percentage points from last year, with 29% expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them. That establishes a new low in public school confidence from the 33% measured in Gallup's 2007 and 2008 Confidence in Institutions polls. The high was 58% the first time Gallup included public schools, in 1973.
Just tossing this out there--when did teachers unions start amassing power?
Some good news to report, though: the military as an institution remains at the top of the list, where it has been almost continuously since 1989, at 75% "great deal/quite a lot" of confidence.
3 comments:
A bit of a disconnect here - because Gallup also reports that 75% of Americans are "very satisfied" with their own kids' schools, and 85% of Americans are "very satisfied" with their own education.
Thus, people have a misrepresented opinion of "public education." They think their kids school is great but all others are failing. This is no different than the 10% approval rating of Congress, while 92% of incumbents are re-elected. People generally approve of their reps while claiming it's the other ones - or the other party - that is bad.
Confidence in congress has followed the same basic trend:
About 42-43% in 1974 and about 12% today.
Confidence is lower in church or organized religion ... 66% to 48%.
I don't think this is unionization of school teachers.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108142/confidence-congress-lowest-ever-any-us-institution.aspx
-Mark Roulo
It certainly didn't help, and isn't helping today.
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