Education Week: Obama Education Views Can Sway Public, Poll Says

The Education Next-PEPG poll shows the gap between rank-and-file Democratic voters, who are more likely to be swayed by presidential opinion, and education practitioners, who have been slower to adopt changes such as charter schools, said Charles Barone, a longtime Capitol Hill education staff member and director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee in New York City.

“I think because the advent of strong accountability is associated with [Mr.] Bush, for a lot of people on the left, it was easier for them to hate it,” Mr. Barone said, even though efforts were championed by Democrats such as Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who later was the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee in the Senate.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10624106/2009-Education-Next-PEPG-Survey-of-Public-Opinion