Poll Reveals Attitudes Toward Achieving Equality in Schools
Feature Story by Ritu Kelotra - 5/10/2004
A poll released today reveals that most Americans believe in increasing funding to "whatever level it takes" to improve low-performing schools.The Newsweek poll, which takes into account the views of white, black, and Hispanic Americans, was released just one week before the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Court's ruling in Brown outlawed the segregation of public schools.
"What we need more than anything is a rededication and recommittment to quality public education for all students -- and anything else is a distraction," said Theodore M. Shaw, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). LDF, then led by Thurgood Marshall, helped win the historic Brown cases in 1954.
According to results of the poll, nearly nine out ten Americans believe that an increase in government funding is necessary to improving the nation's schools. Seven out of ten Americans agree that is it important to increase racial diversity and integration in public schools.
When asked if they favor increasing school funding to whatever level it takes to raise minority student achievement to an acceptable national standard, 68 percent of all Americans said they do. A majority of Americans also said they believe that school funding for predominantly minority and poor schools, per student, needs to be equal to that of predominantly white and affluent schools.
With the country in a national debate over school vouchers and the use of standardized tests, most Americans favored increased funding as a remedy to unequal education.
When asked to choose between increasing funding for public education and providing school vouchers in order to eliminate barriers to quality education, 60 percent of all Americans said they would rather have increased funding for schools. Whites, blacks, and Hispanics all agreed that increasing public school funding was a better solution than vouchers.
After being asked about the consequences of a federal law requiring that students pass standardized tests for grade promotion, a majority of Americans – 69 percent – said they think the law would cause a major increase in dropout rates. They also oppose, by greater than 2-to-1, penalizing schools by taking federal funds away from school districts whose students do not improve on standardized tests.
In order to help improve public schools in their communities, a majority of Americans said they would be willing to pay more in local taxes and volunteer their own time and expertise to schools even if their children did not attend them.
