This is a great representation of the two candidates on their view of public spending, although I am worried for our nation if we have finally descended into a social policy of simply taxing the rich to pay for everything the government spends. If you are interested, take a look here The Pew Research Center does a very good job presenting the data.

Undervaluing "quality" jobs or naive parents?

Although I am more concerned with higher education, I found a somewhat interesting but more entertaining article on the Gallup site titled, U.S. Parents Optimistic About Graduation, Unsure About Jobs.  When you read this, or at least when I read this, I figured they would be talking about graduating from college, but they are actaully talking about graduating from HIGH SCHOOL.  In the main poll of this...poll... they ask people to rate on a 1-5 scale whether they know their child will graduate from high school and whether they know they will find a good job.  An overwhelming 91% of parents strongly agreed that they knew their child would graduate from high school (although the national average is only 73%) whereas 38% strongly agreed their child would find a good job after graduation.  Oddly enough, before dipping down into the 1's and 2's of this response (being that they disagree about the respective questions) 89% answered either 5-4-3 (saying they at least agreed) that they knew their child would find a good job after high school.  So does this poll eliminate the children planning on going to college? or are these respondent's children just not going to college?  And if they are not planning on going to college but are going to find a good job out of high school, why are the parents so eager to say that they KNOW they will graduate from high school (which 99% answered a 5-4-3 on).  This is obviously a poll with horrible questioning and problems with "mushiness index" because the question is too close to home (literally) for the respondents.

Teacher Unionization

With the recent strike of the Chicago teachers, an interesting question is posed: Are teacher's unions helpful?  America says "no".  As you can see from the attached image above, since 1976, the general opinion of the unions have received a negative connotation.  The image is from the article, Polling Shows Most Americans Think Teachers Unions Have Hurt Education Quality. Why does the public seem to think the unions lower education quality?  After some research, in most districts teacher compensation, or salaries, makes up 80% of the budget.  That means that only 20% of the budget is left over for school advances, sports, extracurriculars and so on.  Teachers are strongly protected by their union when it comes to pay cuts and other aspects of financial "equality", which they basically control.  Being unionized, they can essentially refuse pay cuts so schools are forced to dip into that remaining 20%, which makes school less enjoyable, which makes children hate their lives more, which makes for lower willingness to learn, which makes for lower marks, which makes for lower quality of education.  A lot of teachers get tenured in as little as working at a school for three years, which pretty much ensures they cannot get fire no matter how much they suck at teaching.  Basically, with teacher unions, there is no way to improve the quality of school and education when they are taking 80% of the money allocated to school districts.  In a lot of cases even, teachers receive a 4% annual salary upgrade.  Teachers really do not have it all that bad like people tend to think, they get free health care (in most cases for life) for themselves and their families, extraordinary job security and much better benefits than those in the private sector.


Source:
http://www.michiganreview.com/archives/2857
http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/10/polling-shows-most-americans-think-teach

Libya Response Poll!

Pollster Blog #2 Ladies and Gentlemen!

My first post was incredibly lack luster, simply because I didnt have much knowledge on the subject of polling at all! Now I am armed with some more information on what goes into a poll including the meaning behind the margin of sampling error and the confidence level. Typically, both of those can be found at the bottom of the polls. It belongs with the usual technical stuff.

Back to Libya though. After all the uproar that is happening in Libya right now, with Ambassador Chris Stevens being killed, the American reaction to Libyan Government and its citizens is, not surprisingly, low. I look to Ramussen Reports this week for a poll on Libya, as suggested by my wonderful professor Dr. Gelbman. The article titled "Just 29% Are Even Somewhat Confident Libya Will Punish Ambassador’s Killers" is pretty short. Did not expect that. However, it does provide one thing that my previous poll did not: the questions they asked. The Ramussen Reports provided a link to the questions so people could see what was asked. Recently, in class, our discussion has been based around nonattitudes and insincerity. A lot of the causes behind both of these stems from the questions, both how they are asked and who is asking.

Another nice point that of interest regarding the Ramussen Reports is by stating how they gathered the information. In this case, it was by an automated survey. They go into more detail about who they poll, how they decide who that is and many other factors. They are much more open and direct about their polling techniques than previous articles. Especially for someone who is trying to learn all they can about the various aspects of polling, this information is incredibly helpful!

See you all next time!

Mass Transit--What to do?

Being from Wisconsin, I understand the politics behind transportation issues in this country. A bi-partisan effort has insisted that the government sponsor creating a network of transportation rail lines similar to Europe and part of the stimulas program was allocated to Wisconsin for this project. Governor Scott Walker effectively rejected this proposal and returned the stimulas funds. Hawaii is also considering building a rail line. Four years ago California issued 10 billion dollars in bonds to build over 800 miles of high speed rail. According to an article found here the LA Times, "...the cost of which is now pegged at $68 billion..." Despite all of this negative publicity, the public still wants a more reliable national transportation system according to a new poll by the National Research Defense Council, showing that a majority of Americans want individual states to increase spending on this system. "Americans over-estimate what their state spends on public transportation, estimating that it is an average of 16 percent of their state’s transportation budget – and still they would like that amount nearly doubled, calling for their state to spend an average of 28 percent on public transportation (note: The average percentage of transportation money – state plus federal – spent on transit over the past three years was 6.55 percent per state)."

Raising the amount a state spends on transportation to 28% would drastically change the budgets for each state, pulling much needed funds from every sector in order to compensate the transportation. Indiana, named "Crossroads of America," has a total budget for 2012 of 54.5 billion dollars, 3.5 billion was spent on transportation according to governmentspending.com-on par with the national average. Raising the spending to 28% would place transportation to the second highest priority, just shy of education. Citizens should think critically about government spending and priorities when answering poll questions, and realizing the implications of raising areas of spending.

2012 Election Polling

This morning, C-SPAN aired this discussion of polling in the 2012 election season. While it's mostly focused on the presidential and vice presidential candidates and the campaign season "horserace," there's some consideration of public opinion on major issues as well.

No Child Left Behind

Gallup polled American's on their feeling about the "No Child Left Behind" act introduced by the Bush Administation in 2001. From what I understand, a very basic explanation of the NCLB is that every federally funded school (K-12) have to administer standardized tests and schools that repeatedly do poorly or do worse than before get some sort of reprimandation by the state or federal government. Surprisingly, this act is viewed rather poorly by the public which comes as a bit of a surprise to me.  It is surprising to me because I can't see how an act that measures schools' performance on an annual basis can be anything but good.  Is it because of the social lashing the school's reputation receives whence done poorly with their education efforts? And it was also surprising that here was virtually no difference in opinion about NCLB between adults with students in a K-12 setting, and one's without. Not only do American's generally think NCLB is not beneficial, almost 1/3 of them thin it has made education worse! Someone please explain to me how this can be. The public's general perception of them hating Bush? Who knows? In my opinion, I think school's should be called out more for student's performing poorly.
Source: No Child Left Behind Act Rated More Negatively Than Positively