Education: More Money, But Not Mine
Tonight's new poll on Californians and public schools has some interesting new insights, and one very familiar theme: spend more, but don't ask me for it.
The Public Policy Institute of California survey finds a few shifting thoughts about education... including that it's now #3 in importance of issues facing the state, trailing behind immigration and jobs/economy.
Still, 52% of those queried say the quality of education is a big problem. Democrats seem to be more concerned (64%) than Republicans (55%) and independents (51%). Latinos are more likely to say the quality of education is improving (32%) than are other racial and ethnic groups, while African-Americans (44%) lead the way in saying that the quality of education has worsened.
A whopping 87% believe that some kind of change is needed in K-12 education. But consensus on what change is tough to find; in fact, the most popular change in the PPIC poll was "teacher quality," and that only garnered only 11% of the votes as the biggest issue. Class size and "teaching the basics" were the next two on that list.
And there is also a lot in this poll about a familiar theme: money. 57% of public school parents say their local schools don't have enough cash. But only 48% overall agree with that sentiment.
And then there's the familiar question of who pays.
While a slight plurality (48%) of those surveyed would oppose higher property taxes to help their local schools, 66% would support a bond measure-- i.e., borrowing-- to help those same schools. And although 64% of those surveyed oppose any increase in the state sales tax to help K-12 education, 68% support raising taxes on the most wealthy to help K-12 education.
By the way, the PPIC survey finds 53% of respondents approve of how Governor Schwarzenegger is doing his job, but only 36% approve of the job he's doing when it comes to education.
The full survey will be here tomorrow morning.
