IU survey shows Hoosiers rate Indiana public schools highly

A majority of Indiana residents feel positively about the public school system, a survey recently conducted by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at IU revealed. The 2003 Public Opinion Survey on Education in Indiana was released Friday.\nThe survey, conducted in November 2003, consists of results of 1,001 telephone interviews from random Indiana households.\nCEEP Director Jonathan Plucker was one of four people from the center who worked closely on the survey.\n"Our goal is to provide the public with a piece of the information puzzle," Plucker said. "After doing the survey again you will be able to see the trends in the fall next year and the year after that and that will become very interesting. We want policy makers to say 'wow.'"\nPlucker said most of the results of the survey were not very surprising to him. But he said public opinion was much stronger than he had anticipated.\n"The results provide policy makers with information on public attitudes on several hot-button issues such as school choice, charter schools, full-day kindergarten and education financing," Plucker said. "The most surprising result is the high percentage of Indiana adults who reported knowing very little about state efforts to improve educational accountability. This leads us to believe that we need to do a better job of educating Hoosiers about K-12 education, especially the numerous and far-reaching efforts to help our students learn."\nAccording to the survey, funding is another major concern for Indiana residents. More than half of Indiana residents said they believe public schools are not currently receiving enough funding to meet their needs and nearly 70 percent of parents of school-age children believe schools are underfunded.\nHowever, Plucker said the survey's results will do little to affect the current status of schools.\n"The impact of the survey is more long-term," Plucker said. "Therefore, no immediate changes will be made. That's just not how the policy works."\nWhen drawing up the survey, the group had to guess on the various hot topics to cover, Plucker said. There are about a dozen such issues included. Among the more prominent ones were the No Child Left Behind Act and mandatory half-day kindergarten.\n"It's surprised me that public support for the No Child Left Behind Act and mandatory half-day kindergarten was at about 80 percent," Plucker said. "Also, people tend to support high standards and sanctions for schools that commonly have low performance."\nThough Plucker said he is pleased with the survey overall, he said he'd like to change a few things.\n"It should take about four to six weeks to proof, edit and publish the survey," Plucker said. "This time it took us about six to eight weeks. Ideally, I would have liked to have had this survey out a month ago. We just had to be a lot more careful doing it this time and that is what took us longer."\nLynn Coyne, member of the Monroe County School Board, said surveys such as these are a key to help communication between schools and parents. Though Coyne said his views do not reflect the entire board, he said he had many personal opinions toward the survey's findings.\n"It is important to survey beliefs regarding the school system on a regular basis," Coyne said. "This confirms what you'd expect, that people have confidence in the public school system and deservedly so."\nThe survey also found about two-thirds of Indiana residents rate public school teachers positively. Also, nearly 80 percent of all Hoosiers think parents should be allowed to send their children to another public school if their school fails to meet state performance standards.\nThe overall sampling error of the survey is approximately plus or minus three percent. For more information, the survey can be found in its entirety at www.indiana.edu/~iepc.\n-- Contact staff writer Matt Mattucci at mmattucc@indiana.edu.