Traditional Public Schools Win Vote of Confidence in Poll

By Darcia Harris Bowman

Washington

When it comes to fixing the nation's schools, policymakers who champion alternatives to traditional public education are out of sync with most Americans, the new edition of an annual poll suggests.

Support for publicly financed vouchers for private school tuition has declined over the past three years, from 44 percent of respondents in 1998 to 39 percent this year, in the survey conducted by the Gallup Organization for Phi Delta Kappa International, a Bloomington, Ind.-based professional education organization.

Only half of this year's respondents said they had heard or read about charter schools, even though more than 2,000 such schools are now operating in 33 states and the District of Columbia. When told that charter schools are freed from many state regulations to operate independently, only 49 percent of the respondents said...