What the Public Thinks of Public Schools

While the past few days have been dominated by news of President Obama's back-to-school speech, more important news seems to have slipped under the radar.

In a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, Paul E. Peterson, a professor of government at Harvard and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes that the president also owes a speech to American parents.

Peterson suggests that the public has turned a blind eye to today's American public schools. In his article, "What the Public Thinks of Public Schools," Peterson reports that public assessment of schools has fallen to the lowest level recorded since Americans were first asked to grade schools in 1981. What's more, high-school graduation rates are lower today than they were in 1970. Additionally, the math and reading scores of 17-year-olds have been stagnant for four decades.


"In another sign of declining confidence, states Peterson, "the public is less willing to spend more money on public education. In 1990, 70% of taxpayers favored spending 'more on education,' according to a University of Chicago poll. In the latest poll, only 46% favored a spending increase. That's a 15% percentage point drop from just one year ago when it was 61%."

As if that weren't enough, Peterson insists that parents should be informed about how much students learn, how much schools spend, and how much teachers are paid.

In 2007, the public estimated that teachers earned an average of $33,000 a year. In reality, that estimate was well below teacher's actual average salary of $47,000 across all states. When those surveyed were informed about actual teacher salaries, support for teachers to receive pay raises plummeted by 14 percentage points.