Raleigh – A new Civitas Poll of registered North Carolina voters shows they are open to options for schools, assessment of students, and education funding.
As for assessments, voters were asked whether schools should be required to get written permission before videotaping or photographing students and their work. Seventy-nine percent of voters said schools should be required to get written permission from parents before taking videos or photos of students and their work. Currently, teachers are allowed to take photos of a child or their work without written permission by parents or guardian.
The state Department of Publication Instruction is collecting information on student performance, beginning in kindergarten, and storing the data on the cloud. Sixty-nine percent of voters support allowing parents to remove their children from this system.
“The numbers indicate that parents clearly want to know what data is being collected about students,” said Dr. Robert Luebke, Senior Policy Analyst for Education at the Civitas Institute. “Moreover, parents want to choose whether to participate in such efforts.”
Also, asked which kind of school they would select for their children if they could choose any type, only about one-third of voters (34 percent) would select a regular public school. Also, only 37 percent rated the state’s public school system as good or excellent. 31% of those polled would prefer to send their children to a private school. 19 percent said they would send their child to a charter school. 8 percent preferred home school.
In addition, 58 percent of voters were generally in favor of the idea of Education Savings Accounts.
The poll surveyed 600 registered North Carolina voters had a margin of error of plus/minus 4 percent.
