Polls are tricky things, giving a veneer of scientific certainty to an endeavor subject to all sorts of biases, methodological problems, etc. Worse, while they might tell us what people think, they do almost nothing to inform us about what policies actually make the most sense. With those provisos in mind – and they apply heavily here – what follows are the highlights of the annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on public education, released this morning. Phi Delta Kappa, by the way, is the self-described “premier professional association for educators.”

I’m not going to hit all the topics – you can catch every question here – I’m just going to cover the ones likely of most interest to libertarian types. And here they are:

School choice:  Using PDK/Gallup’s long favored voucher question – the most loaded one, which asks whether respondents favor or oppose allowing people to “choose a private school at public expense” – 44 percent favored and 55 percent opposed. For whatever reason – maybe seeing choice greatly expand recently, maybe growing disgust with teachers unions – favorability rose from 34 percent last year. Charter schools were favored by 66 percent of respondents, and “laws that allow parents to petition to remove the leadership and staff of failing schools” – roughly, “parent trigger” laws – were favored by 70 of respondents.  This last one is probably the worst way to deliver “choice,” but it must sound good. And how did the best way to deliver choice – tax credits – do? The pollsters didn’t even ask about them, probably because they would have polled very well.

National Standards: Asked several questions about their thoughts on the likely effect of “common core standards” – but not the Common Core standards – most people thought having some commonality would be beneficial. But there seems to be a huge disconnect between the question and reality: only 2 to 4 percent of respondents answered “don’t know” or refused to respond to the common core questions, but 60 percent of voters polled just a few months ago said they knew nothing about the actual Common Core standards being implemented in almost every state. So people seem to like generic commonality, but know little about the actual standards that were, unfortunately, purposely kept under the radar by their supporters.

Biggest Problem Facing Schools: Surprise, surprise, by far the most cited “biggest problem” people said their public schools were facing was ”lack of financial support.” 35 percent picked that, versus 8 percent fingering “lack of discipline,” the next biggest vote-getter. What this likely tell us is that (1) we are very slowly coming out of a recessionary period and some districts probably are making some cuts, and (2) people have no idea how much is actually spent on education, or how much it has grown over the decades. It also shows that propaganda – when you hear people say “the schools are underfunded” enough you believe it – works.

Grading Public Schools: As always, people gave their local public schools decent grades and public schools overall lousy ones. This year 48 percent of respondents gave their own public schools an A or B (though that means a majority graded them C-or-below), while only 19 percent gave high marks to “public schools nationally.” Basically, people – who often heavily considered schools when they bought their homes – tend to affirm their own choices, but see the overall system as crummy.

And so goes another Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll. See you pollsters next year!