Today 50CAN released the results of a national poll that used a random sample of 6,400 registered voters to gauge Americans’ views on education. The heartening news? A strong majority of respondents felt that improving local schools would be “very helpful” in bettering the U.S. than any other strategy.
For the survey’s findings related to public charter schools, more than half of the respondents favored allowing more charter schools to open. Nearly 75 percent of Americans favored two tenants of charter schooling: providing more school options and giving schools the ability to make changes with less red tape, although they were not stated as features of public charter schools. A staggering 79 percent of Americans favored using technology to individualize learning, something many charter schools are across the country are incorporating into their curriculum. If there was one disappointing finding in the poll, it’s that the results show that charter schools are still combatting the misconception that they aren’t public. Far too many Americans still operate under the false assumption that charter schools are not public schools. In addition to national findings, results were also broken out across eight regions. When respondents were asked to rank the states in their regions, seven of the eight the gold medal recipients (Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington) also ranked in the top 25 on our charter school model state law. To view the 50CAN survey results, click here. Nora Kern is senior manager of research at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
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