Obama Education Views Can Sway Public, Poll Says

A popular president’s strong stances on education issues can shift the public perception of those issues, according to a new national survey released today by the journal Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.

The national survey, conducted earlier this year, found that knowing President Barack Obama’s opinion on education topics gave a boost to those who said they supported particular goals, including an 11 percentage-point increase in support for charter schools and a 13 percentage-point increase in those backing merit pay for teachers.

The survey was drawn from a nationally representative sample of 3,200 Americans, including 709 public school teachers. Pollsters asked what Americans think about a range of contentious education topics, including merit pay, single-sex schools, national standards, virtual schools, and the federal No...