A new survey from Elon University found dissatisfaction with North Carolina’s public schools. But survey respondents place a bulk of the blame on factors outside the classroom.
Only 36% of the 800 survey respondents gave North Carolina’s traditional public schools a grade of an A or a B. That was lower than the rate for private schools (51%), charter schools (41%) and home schooling (40%).
But when asked to list the top factors for underperformance, respondents were most likely to cite a lack of funding or resources. When asked to list three reasons for school underperformance, lack of funding was listed in 60% of responses.
And they generally blamed the state government or local school boards, not teachers, with 46% of surveys listing state government and 44% of surveys listing local school boards as deserving “a lot” of blame. Only 19% of responses listed teachers as deserving "a lot" of blame.
“They often thought that part of the issue was maybe the state's top education and political leaders did not work well together to improve schools,” said Jason Husser, director of the Elon Poll. “Fifty percent said that the state's top leaders did not work very well or not at all well together. So I think that I would treat this if I was a state leader as a sign that there's opportunities for growth, not so much one that is condemning of those leaders.”
Scores went up when respondents were asked to grade the public schools in their local area — with 48% rating them an A or a B. Husser said it’s common in polling for people to feel negatively about issues at a broad level and then more positively at a local level — for instance, polls often show people feel negatively about the U.S. Congress but positively about their local representatives.
Some of that could be at play here, Husser said — but not to the same extent.
“That is somewhat true in what we found with education attitudes in North Carolina,” Husser said. “However, we found it going from 36% in general adults saying that public schools get an A or a B to 48%, that is a meaningful change, but it's not like it turns and flips altogether.”
The survey also suggested many in North Carolina don’t understand the state’s educational system — for instance, only 41% correctly knew that North Carolina’s state superintendent was an elected position, and only 52% knew local school board members were generally elected positions.
Husser argued that reflected the complexity in the process of how state decisions get made.
The survey also asked respondents to weigh in on the use of AI in schools, with results reflecting ambivalence. While 59% of respondents wanted to see AI being taught in schools, 63% said schools should restrict student AI use.
