Polls Indicate that Americans Support More Spending on Education

Thirty-six percent of respondents in the 42nd annual Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup national poll said the crisis in school funding is the number one problem facing schools in their community. This is a four percent increase from last year, and school funding has been singled out as the biggest problem of the decade. Trend data from previous polls shows that concerns about school funding were on the rise even before the recession, according to William Bushaw, the executive director of Phi Delta Kappa International.

The results of the poll, released in the August issue of the Kappan, indicated that Americans’ major concerns regarding education, in addition to school funding, centered on the federal role in education, teacher performance pay, the increasing importance of college, and the need to place more effective teachers in every school.

Overall, the polling date showed that Americans believe that money makes a large difference on the quality of education. In an open webcast regarding the poll, Bushaw noted that people seem more favorable to paying increased taxes for schools than for other services, but that it is important to “make the case of return on investment.” This may help explain the increasing nationwide interest in teacher merit pay and teacher evaluation.

This new data from PDK is consistent with other recent polls and surveys nationwide. For example, based on a sampling of 2010 Rasmussen Report polls (Rasmussen is an electronic media company specializing in public polling information), 55 percent of voters say the government does not spend enough on education, and 38 percent of Americans believe that “aiding low income students is the most important role for the federal government in education.” However, these opinions vary when respondents are asked if they are willing to increase taxes to avoid budget cuts on education—mainly in that respondents’ willingness to spend more often depends on geography more than political views or interest in public education.

A statewide survey in Georgia reveals that half of respondents (registered voters) “would pay higher taxes or fees to reverse education spending cuts that have led to teacher furloughs and layoffs the past few years.” The poll was commissioned by The Atlanta-Journal Constitution and 12 other Georgia newspapers and was released in July 2010. So far this year Georgia has cut more than $400 million from public schools.

In many cities and districts across the country voters have approved increases sales or property taxes to fund school budgets, and often to make up for cuts in state funding. The school districts that are able to accept higher taxation, tend, however, to be in affluent areas. For example in California the measures winning approval are in smaller, high-wealth districts and are “raising worries about growing inequality between schools in rich and poor communities," according to an article by the Associated Press.

In Texas, just over a fifth of school districts (Texas has around 1,000 districts) in the state have won voter approval to raise their tax rates since 2006. In seventy-eight districts voters have rejected proposed increases according to www.TexasISD.com and an article by the Dallas Morning News.

A close look at districts that are increasing local taxes to fund education supports the California report that it is mainly high-wealth districts that are raising more local funds for education. For example, surveys conducted in Dakota County, Minnesota and Davis County Utah indicated that 59.5 percent of residents in the former county and 65 percent in the latter would pay higher taxes to improve education. Census data for Dakota County shows the median home value and median household income are far above those for Minnesota as a whole, and the percent of people living below poverty in the district is less than half of the percentage statewide as of 2008. Davis County is 93.8 percent white, and the median household income is over $10,000 more than the state average.

Despite the possible inherent inequities involved in local district funding, states are increasingly relying on individual districts to hike taxes to make up for cuts in state funding. Arizona recently decreased state funding by $70 million and pushed homeowners to come up with the difference by limiting a 30-year-old “homeowner rebate” on annual tax bills. An August 2010 report by the Arizona Republic describes some of the effects of the change:

“The increases won’t show up on tax bills until fall 2011 and are likely to be largest in central-city and rural districts, where they could run from about $60 to $200 a year per $100,000 of home value. Republican lawmakers, who approved the tax shift despite an aversion to tax increases, cast the move as a fairness issue rather than a tax hike.”