Education - the Silver Bullet?

"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes -- we need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce -- they should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. . . ." so said Sam Seaborn (played by Rob Lowe) in an episode of The West Wing -- a nice Hollywood summation of progressive views on education.

In past elections, we have witnessed almost all Democrats and a few Republicans claim education as the centerpiece of their campaigns. But what about the voters -- how do they feel about education? In our poll of 404 voters, we asked whether they agreed or not with the following statement: "The children of North Carolina are getting the best education possible."

Over 60 percent of the people surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. However, 25 percent agreed and slightly over eight percent strongly agreed with the statement. When broken down we find more than one-third of the voters believe that North Carolina's children are getting the best education possible.

This sizeable group of voters may hesitate on the platform of more governmental effort for improving education. This doubt could cause voters to base their decision of choosing a candidate on other issues -- in fact, a fairly large number might actually vote against candidates who run on a platform calling for stronger educational efforts.

When we dug deeper into the results of this particular question, we found an even more surprising fact – in fact, astounding: Parents with school-aged children agree at a higher rate than voters without school-aged parents that North Carolina's children are receiving the best education possible (39.4 percent of the parents agreed with the statement; 31.5 percent of non-parents agreed).

Of the Democrats, 35.4 percent agreed with the statement which is more than either Republicans (33.8 percent) or Independents (31.2 percent). There were no significant difference between whites and African-Americans; and men disagreed with the statement at a higher rate (62.3 percent) than women (59.1 percent).

Income was a major factor in how voters viewed education. A significantly greater percentage of those with a household income of more than $75,000 thought kids were getting the best education than any other income level -- 44.9 percent of these higher income voters agreed or strongly agreed as opposed to 33.1 percent of those making less than $75,000.