It depends. If you survey a nationally representative sample of the population and ask about the quality of public schools in the nation as a whole, you get one answer. If you ask parents about the public school their child attends, you get another answer, according to decades of polling done by PDK/Gallup.
What grade would you give the public schools nationally, and what grade would you give the school your oldest child attends? The 2011 poll released today finds that only 17 percent of the public would give the nation's schools a grade of A or B. But fully 79 percent of parents would give their child's school an A or B. Conversely, the 81 percent majority of the public would give the nation's schools a grade of C, D, or F. But only 21 percent of parents would give their child's school a grade of C, D, or F.
This attitudinal gap between the national and the local shows up in surveys on a variety of topics. It is a quirk of human nature--the tendency to be fearful and judgmental toward the unknown. Maybe the nation's public schools aren't as bad as you think, and maybe a lot of other things aren't as bad either.
Source: 43rd Annual PDK/Gallup Poll
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