The public is inconsistent and not terribly sophisticated in its thinking about public schools and school reform issues. That’s the takeaway from the fourth and final installment of the 2016 Louisiana Survey, a project of LSU’s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs, which was released today.
The survey found that, overall, the public is split and seemingly inconsistent in its views on major school reform issues. For instance, more than two-thirds of Louisiana residents support increasing the number of charter schools. But only about half support vouchers to give students and their parents more choice.
Similarly, opposition to Common Core educational standards are on the rise, with more than half the state’s residents now opposing them. However, the concept of shared academic standards remains popular when stripped of the label “Common Core.” Just one-third of residents said they oppose the standards without the label, the survey found.
“So if you ask the same question, without the language ‘common core’ and the answer flips..,” said Michael Henderson, who heads the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs and spoke today about the survey results at the Baton Rouge Rotary Club weekly meeting. “People are not reasonably opposed to the goal of Common Core but, rather, what it has come to mean through politicization.”
In another example of the public’s inconsistency, Henderson pointed out that respondents favor the state’s policy of assigning letter grades to public school districts based in part on student test scores. However, there is little evidence that people actually use these grades. Just one in 10 could correctly identify the grade issued to their district.
“There is a paradox and a puzzle that underlies all responses on surveys about education issues,” he said. “It suggest there is not a lot of sophisticated thinking.”
Does the public show a similar lack of sophistication on other issues of public policy?
Unfortunately, yes, Henderson said.
“Most people, most of the time, are not real familiar with the details of public policy so you are not going to get sophisticated reasoning,” he said. “We might want to see a better informed public in a democracy, but it just doesn’t happen most of the time.”
Previous installments of the 2016 Louisiana Survey have measured attitudes about the state budget, state and national politics, and Louisiana’s quality of life.
—Stephanie Riegel
