The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank focusing on education excellence, issued a report yesterday of a survey of slightly more than 1,000 American adults. The survey asked about school reform, and while we tend to stay away from think tanks and school-reform politicians, who typically have very little impact on what happens in our classrooms, this survey (full report) purports to represent the views of average Americans. It’s entitled, “How Americans Would Slim Down Public Education.”
One of the biggest highlights is that Americans generally favor reducing administrative staff to the “bare minimum” (63%) and combining small schools or districts to centralize essential functions like transportation, administrative staff, and so on (also 63%).
This is a big deal in Illinois, since recent thoughts of combining smaller school districts were met with great opposition. I wonder if Illinois’s 860-plus school districts were part of this survey. For his part, Gov. Pat Quinn seemed to agree with the 63% of Americans, thinking it would be a good way to save money, as we read in this editorial in the Southern. The State Journal-Register, however, pointed out in January that merging districts would cost the state about $3.7 billion up front, which it couldn’t afford, according to a report compiled by the Classrooms First Commission for the Illinois State Board of Education.
Other notable trends in thought:
- 74% of the people surveyed think, when necessary, schools should lay off teachers with poor performance first and protect those with good performance. In other words, performance rather than seniority should dictate which teachers get laid off. About 18% disagreed with this statement.
- With regard to virtual schools, 32% think they’re a bad idea, according to the report, while 40% think they’re good only in cases where students have difficulty in traditional schools.
- About 76% of respondents said they believe too many children are labeled as “special needs” even though some have nothing more than a behavior problem or were not taught well in the first place.
One problem with the second point is that the survey gave respondents no other choices, except “I don’t know” and “Something else.” You either had to respond “a good idea but only for students who had trouble in traditional schools” or “a bad idea.” The other options made respondents feel uninformed about this issue, and nobody likes to respond in a way that makes them feel uninformed—unless they really do feel uninformed.
Anyway, those are the highlights reported in the media, but the survey actually asked a few more questions that are of high interest to us—questions concerning extracurricular activities, where athletics and fine arts usually come in.
Question: How about… Hiring local artists and fitness trainers part-time for art, music, and gym classes instead of using full-time teachers. Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose this idea?
Here, the respondents were split right down the middle: 22% strongly favored this idea, and 28% strongly opposed the idea (the margin of error is ±3%). Overall, 49% favored this idea while 48% opposed it as a way to save money (3% said they didn’t know about this one).
Does this mean that half of Americans think full-time music teachers and physical education teachers are a waste of money? Not really, but it’s not a big leap from here to there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people try to spin it that way. I would be interested in knowing what you all think about this idea.
Finally, and then we’re putting this survey back in the file, 75% of respondents thought, in order to save money, schools should use “parent volunteers instead of school staff for things like monitoring lunchrooms and clerical help.” If you can get the volunteers, that would be great. Get those parents in the school. Of course, in some schools, it’s hard enough to get them there for two parent-teacher conferences each year or for an IEP meeting, right? Yet, three-fourths of Americans think it would be a good idea for school administrators to count on parent volunteers for work that needs to be done.
I’m not sure that’s a wise move, since if schools can’t count on parents to be there for their own children, how’s that going to work if they’re supposed to be there to help other people’s children or their teachers? Might be better to try this on a case-by-case basis.