Newsday/NY1 Poll: Troubled school system unchanged
BY ELLEN YAN
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER
September 13, 2005
The city's troubled school system is the same it was four years ago, even after Mayor Michael Bloomberg's massive overhaul, according to a third of the registered voters polled by Newsday/NY1.
Class size topped the list of concerns, followed by lack of funding and a distant third, school safety.
A third of the people answering the poll, conducted between last Tuesday and Friday, said the schools were better than four years ago, compared to the 34 percent who considered them the same and 17 percent who felt schools were worse. The rest were not sure.
Jerrold Ross, dean of the School of Education at St. John's University in Jamaica, said he was not surprised at those numbers, partly because making headway on the most important school issues is like "turning around a leviathan."
But he said the poll results also reflect how Bloomberg has approached the overhaul: "They've been too busy focusing on just a few things, like quantitative test results and what you have to measure by that you can put out there in order to be re-elected ... The classes are still large, the money given for all sorts of supplies and material is still small, the city is still being cheated by the state [on court-ordered aid], so how can you say it's better?"
Department of Education spokesman Jerry Russo said there have been "real reforms" that resulted in "record-high" graduation and test scores.
"We still have a lot more to do, but combined with creating new schools and options, providing parent coordinators, giving principals greater autonomy, giving teachers the highest pay raise in history, and increasing the school construction budget by $2 billion, we have begun to turn the system around," he said.
Pollsters questioned 1,303 registered voters and the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Some education observers were surprised that testing ranked at the bottom of seven most pressing issues facing schools, especially with educators and families complaining of too much testing. It's because of the traditional importance placed on tests, they said, as well as the amount of high-profile attention placed on class, contract and safety issues in school, not just in news media but in ads.
