An educational survey, along with a new report on national high school graduation figures, is bound to have an effect on how residents throughout the commonwealth look at public education — both its funding and academic achievements.
The poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies on request by StudentsFirst — a nationwide non-partisan, non-profit education reform think-tank founded in 2010 by former Washington, D.C., Education Chancellor Michelle Rhee — netted interesting results from its more than 800 calls to residents statewide.Overall, the survey found that Pennsylvanians supported reform to teacher evaluations by a large margin, with 72 percent of the callers supporting it, while only 15 percent of the callers opposed; those polled also opposed the general “last in, first out” method of targeted layoffs (34 percent supported the notion, while 23 percent opposed it). Public Opinion Strategies also found that Pennsylvanians supported teacher effectiveness