Teachers and the broader public are divided over issues such as merit pay for teachers, the federal Race to the Top program, and teacher tenure, according to new poll results.
The results of the fourth annual survey conducted for Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and the journal Education Next were released yesterday.
The national poll provides “strong evidence . . . that most Americans support merit pay for teachers, while teachers oppose the policy by a large margin; there is strong opposition among the public to teacher tenure, while teachers favor it; and teachers are significantly more opposed to the Race to the Top program than the broader public.’’
The survey of 1,184 adults was conducted between May 11 and June 8 by Knowledge Networks and features subsets of 684 teachers and 908 residents living in areas with at least one charter school during the 2009-2010 school year. The research was funded with grants from the Gates, Bradley, and Simon foundations.
The findings come a day after Boston School Superintendent Carol Johnson discussed plans to implement what she called excellence pay for teachers. She joined state education officials at a press conference Tuesday to announce the granting of $250 million in Race to the Top funds over the next four years.
The results, which have a 2 percent margin of error, include:
■ Support for “basing a teacher’s salary, in part, on his or her students’ academic progress on state tests’’ jumped 5 points, from 44 percent in 2007 to 49 percent in 2010, while opposition declined from 32 to 25 percent. Only 24 percent of teachers supported the idea, while 63 percent opposed it.
■ Those who oppose teacher tenure outnumber those who support it by a ratio of almost 2 to 1. Forty-seven percent oppose the idea, while 25 percent favor it. Among teachers, 48 percent favored tenure.
■ Thirty-two percent of Americans think Race to the Top is necessary, but 22 percent believe it is an unwarranted intrusion into state and local government and 46 percent expressed no opinion. Support was greater among African-Americans and Hispanics who backed the program 48 percent to 12 percent. Teachers opposed it 2 to 1.
