GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

public opinion

February 8, 2012

Poll: NYers don’t trust Bloomberg to protect students’ interests

by Philissa Cramer, at 8:15 am

New York City residents won’t be appointing Mayor Bloomberg as students’ chief lobbyist any time soon.

Nearly twice as many New Yorkers trust the teachers union to protect students’ interests than they do Bloomberg, according to a new poll out of Quinnipiac University. Bloomberg’s approval rating on schools has hovered around 25 percent since early 2011, according to the poll.

The poll, conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 5, found that 56 percent of registered voters in New York City say they trust the union more to go to bat for students. Less than a third, 31 percent, said they trust Bloomberg more. (The poll of 1,222 registered voters had a margin of error of 2.8 percent.)

Among households containing public school students, the split was even more pronounced. Just 21 percent of those voters picked Bloomberg, and 69 percent chose the teachers union. Parents’ backed the union more often than even households with union members.

The news comes in an education-packed poll conducted after a month in which in a showdown over new teacher evaluations led Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo each to ratchet up rhetoric against teachers and their unions. The poll found that the percentage of New Yorkers with favorable opinions of teachers had fallen, from 54 percent last March to 47 percent now.

But while a different poll earlier this week found high approval for Cuomo’s school policies, a set of questions designed to assess New Yorkers’ feelings about a slate of policy initiatives Bloomberg proposed during his State of the City address last month elicited mixed results.

In that speech, Bloomberg proposed increasing the salaries of teachers who receive high ratings on new evaluations and offering loan forgiveness to top college students who become city teachers.

The poll asked New Yorkers for their opinions on those ideas and others. Here’s what they said:

  • Eighty-four percent of poll respondents said they approved of Bloomberg’s loan forgiveness proposal. The proposal was the only one in Bloomberg’s speech to win immediate support from the United Federation of Teachers.
  • But just 54 percent said they thought it made sense to offer a $20,000 pay raise to teachers with high ratings on new evaluations. Thirty-nine percent said the raises sounded like a bad idea.
  • The broad idea that “public school teachers who do an outstanding job should be rewarded with additional pay, so called merit pay” got support from 72 percent of respondents. Twenty-four percent said the idea sounded bad. Support for merit pay was up eight points since last March.
  • Fifty-four percent of respondents said they thought making it easier to fire teachers sounds like a good idea. Thirty-eight percent said it was a bad idea. Those numbers were the same as a year ago, the first time the poll asked about the topic.
  • Just 11 percent of New Yorkers said they thought teacher layoffs should take place according to seniority, as they would under current rules. Just over 80 percent said they thought layoffs should go in order of performance. A year ago, when Bloomberg was actually threatening layoffs and calling for an end to “last in, first out” seniority layoff rules, support for seniority layoffs was higher, at 16 percent.
  • Just over half of New Yorkers said they thought charter schools should expand in the city, and 38 percent said the publicly funded but privately managed schools should not expand. In 2009, the first time this question was asked, two-thirds of New Yorkers said charter schools should expand and just 26 percent said there should be no expansion. At the time, the city was approaching a state-set charter school limit that was raised in 2010.
  • Just a third of New Yorkers support the Bloomberg administration’s recent decision to bar churches from using school space to hold services. Nearly 60 percent said the ban is a bad idea.

Overall, according to the poll, just 26 percent of New Yorkers approve of how Bloomberg has handled the schools. That figure is statistically identical to the 25 percent low Bloomberg received last spring, during the waning days of Cathie Black’s brief tenure as chancellor. Fifty-seven percent of poll respondents said Bloomberg’s takeover of the schools had been a failure, the same as last year.

Black New Yorkers and those living in the Bronx gave Bloomberg his lowest approval ratings on schools, 21 percent and 19 percent respectively. He did best among New Yorkers making more than $100,000 a year: A full third of them said they supported his schools management.

The news for Chancellor Dennis Walcott was also not good. His approval numbers stayed the same since December, at 34 percent, but his disapproval rate has continued to inch upward and now stands at 37 percent.

Overall, just 13 percent of New Yorkers said the mayor should retain sole control of the city schools after Bloomberg leaves office in 2013. Two-thirds said a new mayor should share control with an independent school board. The law authorizing mayoral control of the city schools is set to expire in 2016.

Half of respondents say they want their next mayor to be someone with government, rather than business, experience. But they gave only mixed reviews to the job performance of three city officials who are plotting mayoral runs: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and Comptroller John Liu.

Print Print
  • Tim

    I wonder if questions 17 and 18 were presented to respondents in the exact same way that they are presented in the survey results. They don’t make sense to me. The choices for each question were only “the teacher’s union,” “Mayor Bloomberg,” or “don’t know”. 

    17. Who do you trust more to protect the interests of New York City public school – teachers, Mayor Bloomberg or the teacher’s union?  

    18. Who do you trust more to protect the interests of New York City public school – students, Mayor Bloomberg or the teacher’s union?  

    What am I missing?

  • Philissa Cramer

    I was also initially confused by this. The questions and answers make sense if you read them as asking “Who do you trust more to protect the interests of New York City public schoolteachers: Mayor Bloomberg or the teacher’s union?” and “Who do you trust more to protect the interests of New York City public school students: Mayor Bloomberg or the teacher’s union?” The only difference is punctuation.

  • Tim

    Quick, someone get Quinnipiac University a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Thanks for the detective work. 

  • Larry Littlefield

    The poll didn’t ask about the link between ongoing budget cuts and past retroactive pension deals.  If it had,  trust in the teachers, their union, Bloomberg, and the state legislature might have dropped to an appropriate level.

    Another question should be this:  now that taxes have been raised on millionaires, whose taxes should be increased, or which services should be cut, to pay for the improved pensions the union won over the past 15 years without even more damage to the classroom?

  • Guest

    If they asked what color the graduation hats they liked you would still ask about pensions.  Get over it. 

  • Larry Littlefield

    I’ll get over it in 2030, when after 20 more years of not having enough money for schools some money becomes available.  But I’ll be sure to warn people that if money is increased for the NYC schools, it will all go to earlier retirement.  Once bitten, twice shy.

  • Larry Littlefield

    And let me say this further.  There are two instances in which the self interest of the teachers’ union and the students radically diverge.  How much money is going to teachers and former teachers who are not working vs. those who are, and how hard it is to replace those who cannot or will not do their job.

    A big deal is being made about the latter.  But the damage due to the former is so vast that I consider it a tempest in a teapot.  Bloomberg won’t say so because he was in on it.  Cuomo won’t say so because he wants to slash pay and benefits for future workers only.  He MSM won’t mention it because their readers are mostly members of Generation Greed, who might not like reading about the link between what some have taken and others have lost.

    But I’m going to keep mentioning it no matter what.

  • Mab

    Larry you won’t make the 20 years because you are obsessed over this point and nothing else. So much else Is broken but this issue is eating you up.
    You have said it many times Game Over. Your like a Pats fan you will never win the last game. Game over

  • old teach

    The business model of accountability and innovation has proven to be a costly experiment fostered by mayoral control of the city schools. The public school parents know all too well the failure of the policies of mayor Bloomberg and his chancellors. The true legacy of this mayor will be the loss of an entire generation of public school students who will have been test prep samplings by the corporate agenda of the ed reformers. After buying and arm twisting for the third term Bloomberg deserves all the criticism that his failed education policies bestow upon him. The parents are wise to his false publicity campaigns.

  • Pogue

    Fair enough.  But, if we are to continue the educational conversation in regards to budgets, it is time to start spreading the topic out to companies that don’t pay enough federal taxes, and banks who made a fortune of others mortgage miseries, and those of the rich with offshore accounts, and oil companies that receive government subsidies even though their profits are astronomical, and politicians who benefit big time from corporate money.

    Thus, when you mention pensions and plan to keep mentioning it, no matter what, we must open the conversation about other budgetary topics and continue to respond with that information too, no matter what.

    So, first off, what do you think about companies and those of the super-rich who avoid taxes with offshore accounts?

  • SickofBloomberg

    What are you talking about???? Teaching is a JOB, one with higher qualification requirements than most.  Why should teachers not get paid and get their pensions?  Just because they work with children?  Would you suggest that pediatricians work for less??  Your logic escapes me.  Teaching is work, not charity. Why should our taxes subsidize baseball and football teams and not our teachers?

  • SickofBloomberg

    What mental illness has gripped our society to make demonizing teachers acceptable?  What does it say about a country that makes a hero out of an actor or actress that abuses drugs and alcohol but says teachers are crooks for wanting pay and pensions?  Our defense budget is bloated beyond comprehension but we penny pinch our schools.  Just pathetic.

  • LeFlerp

    Amen! In fact, why should teachers not be paid *more*, and have their pensions *increased*?  Can anyone give me one good reason why this shouldn’t happen?

  • Vote NO!

    When  you  look  at  the  responses  to  questions  18  and  22  from  Blacks  and  Latinos,  the  poll  results  are  even  more  devastating.  These  are  the  two  minority  groups  that  have  the  largest  numbers  of  students  enrolled in  the  public  school  system.  Both  groups  overwhelmingly  trust  the  Union  over  the  Mayor  to  protect  the  interests  in  students.  Both  groups,  with  an  85%  majority  want  to  see  and end  to  mayoral  control  as  it  is  now.

  • LeFlerp

    What is this, the fairness doctrine applied to message board posts?  

    To state the obvious, Pogue, if you think these are extremely pressing issues with respect to New York City schools, why not just write about them yourself?  If you put the effort into demonstrating how much money is missing from the NYC education budget because of bad federal tax policy and CDO and RMBS fraud, you might make some compelling arguments.  Larry doesn’t strike me as a guy who thinks he has much to lose on these topics, so I’m sure he’ll give you his take.  But the suggestion that you can’t talk about unsustainable retiree benefits unless you simultaneously talk about everything else under the sun doesn’t make much sense to me. 

  • Pogue

    Sorry, Flerpi, but if the topic is going to stay on budgets, many issues affect the budgets of public schooling and its support and resources.

    Thus, how do you feel about profit-mongering oil companies being provided government subsidies while schools are being asked to cut budgets?

  • LeFlerp

    Well, if we’re limiting it to the profit-mongering ones (I see you’ve enrolled in Fiorillo’s course in gratuitous compound adjective usage), I feel not great about it. On the other hand, I feel even worse about educated westerners surfing the web and complaining about the injustice of their lives while hundreds of millions of other people spend their lives dying of malnutrition and/or getting systematically murdered. I suppose that’s not much of a policy statement, but it’s about as far as we can go unless you put more effort into this than posing a fatuous question.

  • Pogue

    Flerpolopoulos, we can spread the debate out as far as you want to go.  When we talk about education and budgets and the futures of our students, we can also include the jobs waiting/not waiting for them when they finish their academic careers.

    Thus, are you okay with myriad American companies outsourcing jobs to foreign countries to cut and bypass fair wages for American workers to lower their budgets and maximize profits?

  • Larry Littlefield

    Now let make my point clearer about how the pension deals, which are irrevocable, are more important than any aspect of “accountability.”

    We had 80,000 teachers.  Now we are down to, what, 65,000 despite spending more money?  And going down. If if they were to start getting us out of the hole rather than digging it deeper, it would be going down more.  Just as in the 1970s after Tier I.

    There are, perhaps, a minority of teachers who cannot or will not do their jobs.  How many?  Is it 15,000?  No way.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “The business model of accountability and innovation has proven to be a costly experiment fostered by mayoral control of the city schools.”
    Again, property taxes have been increased, state income taxes have been increases, sales taxes have been increased, other services have been cut disproportionately, total spending on members of the United Federation of Teachers has soared.  And what did we get for it.

    We got 15,000 fewer teachers, and the losses are going up.  No wonder Bloomberg and the UFT want to fight about everything else.  Compared with that, the “business model of accountability and innovation” is irrelevant, whether you are pro or con.

  • Nychistoryteacher

    Larry,

    You often point to teacher salaries and pension contributions as an unfair burden for tax payers. Those two issues are really a distraction and pale in comparison to the true burden on tax payers – the lowest top marginal income tax rate and lowest capital gains tax rate in history. To make up for the reduced contributions from the wealthiest Americans, middle class tax payers have had to contribute more.

    Is our state really losing money because teachers are living a life of luxury, or is the real issue that wealth in our country has been redistributed to the richest 1% of Americans at an alarming rate?

  • LeFlerp

    There are at least three separate issues here:  (1) how to set a level of taxation that maximizes revenue without unintended negative consequences; (2) how to equitably allocate the burden of taxation among taxpayers; and (3) how to equitably allocate funding within a given budget.  You’re talking about the first and second issues.  Those issues are hugely important.  I mainly post about the third issue.  Is the third issue nothing more than a distraction?  I don’t think so.

    Imagine that you have two prisoners in a jail cell.  The first day, the guard brings a loaf of bread.  He breaks off half and takes it home, and tosses the other half into the cell.  Prisoner A splits the half into two equal quarters and hands one to Prisoner B.  The second day, Prisoner A breaks the half-loaf into three pieces, keeping two for himself and giving one to Prisoner B.  

    Prisoner B:  ”That’s not fair.”

    Prisoner A:  ”This issue is really a distraction and pales in comparison to the true burden on us — the guard is taking half of our loaf of bread home every night.”

  • Nychistoryteacher

    @Flerp and Larry

    If I was in that metaphorical prison cell I would certainly be focused on the guy who is taking half off the top, not the scraps that are left over.

    If you focus on how to allocate scraps, you will continue to get scraps.

    Back to the real world

    If you focus on how to reduce pensions and teacher salaries you will allow the redistribution of wealth into the pockets richest 1% of Americans to continue while at the same time, ironically, blaming teachers for being greedy.

    Yes, the “greed” of teachers demanding a living wage through retirement does pale in comparison to the greed of the wealthiest 1% of Americans demanding a lower marginal tax rate then their middle class neighbors.

    It also pales in comparison in economic terms. How much money would be saved if we eliminated every teacher’s pension tomorrow? Would it be more than the revenue that could be earned by restoring the top marginal tax rate to 50% (which is the minimum level we had between 1933 and 1986?) How much revenue would be brought in if we went back to the 90% top marginal tax rate that we had in the decade following the depression?

    If you focus on how to divvy up the scraps of an inequitable system of taxation, you will continue to let true greed and inequality go unchecked. The focus on the scraps deception is the mantra of those who seek to escape an equitable tax structure.

  • LeFlerp

    Remind me to request you as a cellmate. 

    “How much money would be saved if we eliminated every teacher’s pension tomorrow?”

    A few billion dollars a year.  

    “Would it be more than the revenue that could be earned by restoring the top marginal tax rate to 50% (which is the minimum level we had between 1933 and 1986?) How much revenue would be brought in if we went back to the 90% top marginal tax rate that we had in the decade following the depression?”

    Or how about 95%?

    Anyway, scaling back pension benefits even one iota is as politically unrealistic as raising the top marginal rates to 90%.  So the prison guard, Prisoner A, Mitt Romney, and retired public employees can relax while everything goes to hell.

  • Jot

    Game over you lose

  • Nychistoryteacher

    I’m not suggesting 95%. I am suggesting 50% as was the case for the majority of the 20th century.

    If we raised the top marginal tax rate even 2% on the richest Americans we would raise 700 billion over the next 10 years.

    Imagine how we could furnish the cell.

    I think we both think there is a future better than hell or we wouldn’t be writing here.

  • LeFlerp

    I take your point.  Just don’t tell me that the prison guard is the reason my kids have less bread than they had yesterday.  

    (Side note:  People like to mention what the top marginal rate was in year X and compare that with today, but there’s a much more complicated story than that.  Top marginal rates used to be very high.  But there used to be many, many more brackets than there are today, so you had a lot of income being subjected to many lower rate steps on the way up.  Also, top rates kicked in at dramatically higher income levels than today, especially in the depression era.  Not many people had any income subject to that top-bracket tax.  Also, this leaves out all kinds of other taxes that have crept higher and higher during the 20th century, like state, local, and sales tax.) 

Tips, questions, feedback?

Contact us at .

Word from Our Sponsor

Follow GothamSchools

RSS
Subscribe to the daily email digest:

Chalk It Up

Recent Comments

0 comments so far today
View all comments »

RSS Feeds

Newsroom posts Community posts All GothamSchools content

Archives

May 2013
M T W T F S S
« Apr  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Copyright Notice