Voters Favor Obama Over McCain on Education
If improving public schools was all that voters cared about in this presidential election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama would get more votes than Republican candidate John McCain, according to the results of a new poll. The poll was conducted by the Gallup Organization and Phi Delta Kappa International, a professional society for educators. Its findings are surprising partly because neither candidate has said much publicly about his plan for improving schools. These results also differ from the results of the same poll in the previous two presidential elections. In 2000 and 2004, no candidate—Republican or Democrat—emerged from the poll as a clear favorite on education issues.
In the latest poll, 46 percent of voting-age adults said Obama would do a better job of handling education, compared with 29 percent who favored McCain. The remaining 25 percent said they didn't know which candidate would be a better education president. Asked which candidate was better poised to close the achievement gap, support research in education, and adequately fund schools, respondents gave Obama the edge each time. Even on the question of promoting parental choice in schools, generally a strong point for Republicans, Obama was favored by 43 percent to McCain's 32 percent.
So why do more people think that schools would be better off if Obama is elected president? That's a question that even officials who conducted the poll couldn't answer. One thing to keep in mind is that this poll of 1,002 adults was conducted from June 14 to July 3. McCain only recently has advanced some of his ideas for improving schools, which include giving parents more choices. Obama, on the other hand, had been more outspoken about education, and poll respondents may have rewarded him for that.
Interestingly, the public is divided on some ideas that Obama has expressed support for on the campaign trail. For instance, the poll found an even split among those who support tying teacher pay to student test scores, an idea that Obama doesn't completely reject despite strong opposition from teacher unions. Also, three of four adults in the poll said that the No Child Left Behind Act has hurt schools in their communities. Both Obama and McCain support a renewal of the law with some changes—although neither has said exactly what changes they would make to it.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Tags: presidential election 2008 | voters | Barack Obama | John McCain | polls | education | Gallup
Tools: 
Share
|
| Comments (13) | Print
Reader Comments
Nice site
Nice article
on mccain and obama
obama rocks and mccain sucks so give up.
Public schools need more money. Period.
Vracer of GA - I'm curious what your experience in public education is to make a claim that public education does not need more money.
I am a teacher in Arizona (McCain's home state), which is currently the 49th lowest state in funding. Teachers here are grossly underpaid. I have worked with colleagues who were amazing teachers who ultimately had to give up the profession because they could not afford to pay their mortgage and feed their families. A friend of mine left the profession last year, after over 15 years of experience. It was an extremely difficult decision for her, but with health care costs becoming increasingly expensive for teachers, it is lowering our take-home pay each and every year, and she had gotten to the point where they were eating spaghetti almost every night because it was what she could afford after paying her bills. And this was after having to borrow money from friends and family to do so.
The education budget in this state gets cut further and further each year. Every year, teachers are expected to do more and more with less and less available to them. This year, our photocopy limits have been cut in half because the school cannot afford to pay for copies as they have in the past. Every day, I have to weigh my lesson plans as being valuable enough to teach if it involves making photocopies for students. I am having to get more and more creative with what and how I am teaching my kids (and this is not always in their best interest) for fear of going over my allocated limit.
Our office supply budget was cut from $250 per school year to $100 per school year. Which means that in order to have enough supplies for my classroom, I have to go out and buy more and more office supplies with my own (limited) funds. And this $100 limit even applies to new teachers who come in with essentially nothing, and are expected to run a classroom with a VERY limited supply budget.
Professional development funds for teachers have also been severely limited this year, and we have been forced to think long and hard about any professional development workshop we would like to attend to make us better teachers. Everything must be prioritzed, and many professional development opportunities that teachers in my department would like to take advantage of are not available. Also, if did decide to devote some of our limited funds to a particular workshop, we could really only afford for one representative of our department to attend and report back on what he/she learned.
And these are just a few examples of the areas where lack of funding has really begun to negatively affect my school.
And I teach in a school that is in a pretty affluent area in my city. To walk around campus and look at our facilities, you would never in a million years imagine that we have money problems.
I fear McCain becoming president because, as a resident of Arizona, I am very aware of his "solutions" to education.
advertisement
