Pa. voters give public schools poor grades in new poll

Apr. 13—Over the past few years, public schools have become a battleground of partisan politics and the culture wars.

There have been arguments over requiring students to wear masks as part of the fight against COVID-19. There have been angry claims that schools are teaching kids critical race theory, a college-level academic concept that posits that race is a social construct and racism is imbedded in legal systems and policies.

There have been calls for certain books to be banned. There have been debates over how to best keep children safe. There have been calls to forbid discussions about LGBTQ+ issues in classrooms.

According to a new poll, it appears all of those battles have impacted how the public sees its local schools. A Franklin & Marshall College poll released today shows that more than half of registered voters in Pennsylvania give the state's public schools a grade of C or lower.

When the poll asked what grade respondents would give their local public schools when it comes to the quality of their work, only 9% awarded them with an A and 27% gave them a B.

The most popular response was a C, coming in at 29%. A grade of D was given by 15% of respondents, while 10% said local public schools deserve a failing grade. The rest of the respondents said they didn't know.

While the overall grades weren't stellar, things got worse for public schools when respondents were asked whether schools have gotten better or worse over the past few years.

Nearly half — 47% — said they had become worse. Only 6% said they had gotten better.

A total of 32% said they had stayed about the same, while 15% said they didn't know.

The new poll also took a look at a specific topic in education that has been receiving some national attention as of late: banning books.

The poll showed that 31% of respondents thought it was acceptable for a book to be banned from a public school classroom or library, while 63% said they did not think banning books was OK.

When it comes to what kind of content should get a book banned, sexually explicit or pornographic content came in well in front of other topics at 60%.

LGBTQ+ content came in second at 18%, followed by books that are not age-appropriate at 9% and violence at 4%.

Another education topic that has received a lot of attention lately — and has been a big topic of discussion for years — is funding for public schools.

A Commonwealth Court judge recently ruled that the state's school funding system violates the state constitution because it underfunds poor school districts. In light of that decision, the poll asked respondents whether they believed their local district has enough funding to properly prepare students for college and the workplace.

The results were fairly well split.

Responses of "definitely" came it at 20%, and ones of "probably" came in at 27%. That totals about 47% of respondents provides answers of "yes."

On the "no" side, 21% said "probably not," and 23% said "definitely not." That's a total of 44%.

The final education question asked by the poll had to do with the state's voucher program. That program allows parents to use public funds — tax dollars — to help cover part of the cost of tuition at private and religious schools.

The poll asked respondents if they were in favor of allowing tax dollars to be spent on sending kids to private or religious schools instead of their local public school. Again, the results were evenly split.

A total of 48% were in favor, with 31% saying they were strongly in favor and 17% saying they were somewhat in favor.

A total of 49% were opposed, with 32% strongly opposed and 17% somewhat opposed.

How the poll was conducted

Included in the latest Franklin & Marshall College poll is a detailed explanation of how the survey was conducted:

The survey findings presented in this release are based on the results of interviews conducted March 17 through April 7. The interviews were conducted at the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College on behalf of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs.

The poll was designed and administered by the staff of the Center for Opinion Research. The data included in this release represent the responses of 643 registered Pennsylvania voters, including 287 Democrats, 266 Republicans and 90 independents.

The sample of registered voters was obtained from Marketing Systems Group. All sampled respondents were notified by mail about the survey. Interviews were completed over the phone and online depending on each respondent's preference.

Survey results were weighted (age, gender, education, geography and party registration) using an algorithm to reflect the known distribution of those characteristics among state voters. Estimates for age, geography and party registration are based on active voters within the Pennsylvania Department of State's voter registration data.

The sample error for this survey is 4.9 percentage points when the design effects from weighting are considered.