| Research – Straight Talk From Americans – 2000
A Survey for the Pew Center for Civic Journalism
“The schools, they are way behind. They are overcrowded, the pay for teachers is poor, and they don’t have the best teachers.”
Six in ten San Francisco residents (63%) say that the failure of public schools to provide a quality education is a problem in the area. Included are 42 percent who say it is a big problem and 21 percent say it is a small problem. One in four (24%) say that this is not a problem and 13 percent say they do not know. These numbers show a greater perception of problems in the San Francisco Bay area than are apparent nationally, where 52 percent of the public say the quality of public education is a problem and 39 percent say it is not. Surprisingly and in contrast to other cities, there are few differences by demographic group on this question. There is some evidence that Asian-Americans are slightly less likely to see this as a problem, but that is the only finding that reaches the level of statistical significance. There is no difference by income levels and none between parents and non-parents.
While San Francisco residents express serious concerns about their public schools, they still give positive ratings to the performance of the local elementary public schools. But their views of the local public upper schools – including junior high, middle schools and high schools – are more negative. Fifty-nine percent of San Francisco residents give their local elementary public schools positive marks, including 17 percent who say they are doing an excellent job. But 36 percent give the schools negative marks, with 23 percent saying only fair and 13 percent giving them poor ratings. Five percent are not sure. (These percentages are based on only the responses from those who say they can rate the schools. A total of 17 percent of the entire population say they cannot rate the elementary schools.) For elementary schools, these marks are lower than the national figures. Three out of five Americans (70%) give the local elementary public schools positive marks, compared to 59 percent in San Francisco. Local public middle and high schools get lower marks. Only 41 percent give the local public middle and high schools positive marks, including 14 percent who rated their work excellent. Fifty-three percent rate the schools negatively, with 33 percent fair and 20 percent poor. These are lower than the national figures, where 56 percent give the local middle and high schools positive marks. Among demographic groups, there are few differences on both levels of education. Looking at the question on public middle and high schools:
The people who know the most about the local schools – the parents – are actually a bit more positive when asked about the actual schools their children attend. Fifty percent of those with school-age children say they are very satisfied with the schools their children attend. Thirty-five percent say they are somewhat satisfied with their kid’s schools. Fourteen percent say they are not too satisfied or not at all satisfied with the schools.
One change that San Francisco residents – along with most Americans — want to see in the public schools is the teaching of values, in addition to academic subjects. Three-quarters of the public (74%) say that the public schools should teach “values, respect and courtesy in addition to the traditional academic subjects.” Twenty-two percent say that the schools should “stick to teach academic subjects and leave teaching values to parents”. The views in San Francisco are almost a perfect match overall with the national numbers. Updating educational resources in the schools is more often cited as the greatest need in the public education system. More than half of all San Francisco residents (55%) rate this as a great need in the local schools, with slightly fewer – around two in five – focusing on reducing class sizes, teacher quality and parental involvement.
The focus on updated teaching resources is more intense in San Francisco than elsewhere. While more than half of San Francisco residents see a great need for these changes, only about one-third of those nationwide see the same level of need in their own public schools. Opinions on replacing outdated teaching resources with up-to-date materials and tools such as computers exhibit some demographic differences.
Somewhat similar patterns are seen in whether or not reducing class sizes is a great need.
Improving teacher quality reflects some different patterns of opinion.
On the issue of opportunities for parental participation, there are somewhat fewer variations by demographic group.
The most basic connection one can have with those who live in your neighborhood is that you know them and that you know their names, which is a step beyond just knowing someone well enough to say “Hello” on the street. A third of San Francisco residents (34%) say they know the names of all their neighbors who live close to them. Forty-four percent say they know only some of their neighbors and 22 percent say they do not know the names of any of their neighbors. These figures are similar to those found in the national PCCJ survey. Where San Francisco residents see problems in their communities, they do have strategies for solving those problems. The public is split on the best way to make their communities better places to live: 39 percent saying that volunteering and 31 percent say that getting others involved is the best choice. Only 10 percent say complain to the authorities and 6 percent say give money. 2 percent are not sure. Detailed Findings: Personal Life When it comes to their daily lives, San Francisco residents are reasonably satisfied with the amount of time they spend in key tasks – with family, friends and relaxation. Eight out of ten Americans say they are satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their families, with five in 10 saying they are very satisfied. (See Table 6.) Americans express somewhat lower levels of satisfaction with how much time they spend with friends and relatives, how much time they spend on hobbies and clubs, and how much time they spend just relaxing. These findings are similar to those from the national PCCJ survey. And these national figures are not dramatically different from those found in a 1993 survey for Family Circle magazine. (Telephone survey for Family Circle Family Index Project, based on 2,004 interviews of adult heads of households, June 1-June16, 1993 by Princeton Survey Research Associates.) For example, satisfaction with the amount of time spent “just relaxing” is down just a bit. In 1993, 39 percent said they were very satisfied with how much time they spend relaxing and 37 percent said they were somewhat satisfied.
Note: An asterisk (*) means less than .5 percent gave this answer. Age, parental status and employment status are directly related to satisfaction.
Nationally, the numbers are somewhat similar. The national PCCJ survey found that a roughly even split – 48 percent versus 44 percent – in satisfaction about the direction of the country. These national numbers represent a marked improvement from only five years ago. In a March 1994 survey for the Times-Mirror Center, only 24 percent of Americans were satisfied with the direction of the country and 71 percent were dissatisfied. (A telephone survey for the Times-Mirror Center for the People and The Press, based on interviews with 2,001 adults, conducted March 16-21, 1994, under the supervision of Princeton Survey Research Associates.) Looking at the most important national problems, San Francisco residents put crime and violence at the top of the list, but the concern is not a dominating one. Only 19 percent mentioned that complex of issues, a far cry from the overwhelming concerns about issues of crime or the economy or foreign policy that has been seen in national surveys on this topic over the years. (See Table 7.) The issues that are mentioned range widely, from the economy to poverty to foreign policy. As is true nationally, San Francisco residents are concerned about children and teenagers, about moral issues and about the state of the nation’s political leadership. The child and teen issues are mentioned by five percent and run the gamut from concerns about too many children on the streets to a lack of respect and out-of-control behavior. General comments about a moral decline in the nation, a lack of values, a failure to embrace religious values are mentioned by 10 percent of the public. A significant subset of these concerns focuses on the moral decline of the family and the failure of the family structure. Another six percent mention problems with politics and politicians. This cluster of issues is also concentrated moral matters: a lack of national leadership and the failure of politicians to set a moral example. With the economy booming along with low unemployment and low inflation, matters relating to money are mentioned by about 10 percent of the public. These comments range from calls for lower taxes, to a focus on the people who are still unemployed and to those who say that prices are still rising and everything still costs too much. Education is also a high on the list of problems, with 10 percent of the public mentioning education.
Just as no one issue dominates the list of national concerns, there is also no issue that the San Francisco public thinks is being ignored by government officials in Washington. No more than 12 percent mention any single issue as not getting adequate government attention. And the San Francisco list of ignored issues, short as it is, is quite similar to the figures from the survey of all Americans.
Detailed Findings: The News Media While the San Francisco public doesn’t fault the news media for failing to cover important problems, many do still express criticism of both the national and local news media. This survey did not ask about any local news media organization by name: rather generic references to local television news and local daily newspapers were used. Media Usage There are many different methods for measuring media usage, including the public’s readership or viewership of daily news stories. And the advent of the Internet has complicated this measurement further. Whatever the measure, these is little doubt that those who run the nation’s news media organizations are worried about declining news readership and news viewership. This survey includes some measures of news media usage that provide a context for the analysis of the public’s views on the issues and it’s judgements of news media performance. Again, no specific local newspaper or television station was mentioned.
Survey Methodology The survey results are based on telephone interviews with a representative sample of 50 adults, age 18 and older living in telephone households in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. The interviews were conducted from October 29 through November 30, 1999. Sample Design The sample for this survey was designed to produce a representative sample of telephone households in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. The selected sample is a random digit sample of telephone numbers selected from telephone exchanges in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and was drawn by Survey Sampling, Inc. of Westport, Connecticut following PSRA’s specifications. The random digit aspect of the sample is used to avoid “listing” bias. The design of the sample ensures this representation by random generation of the last two digits of telephone numbers selected on the basis of their area code, telephone exchange (the first three digits of a seven digit telephone number), and bank number (the fourth and fifth digits). Only working banks of telephone numbers are selected. A working bank is defined as 100 contiguous telephone numbers containing one or more residential listings. The sample was released for interviewing in replicates, which are random subsamples of the larger sample. Using replicates to control the release of sample to the field ensures that the complete call procedures are followed for the entire sample. The use of replicates also ensures that the regional distribution of numbers called is appropriate. Again, this works to increase the representativeness of the final sample. At least 10 attempts were made to complete an interview at every sampled telephone number. The calls were staggered over times of day and days of the week to maximize the chances of making a contact with a potential respondent. All interview breakoffs and refusals were re-contacted at least once in order to attempt to convert them to completed interviews. In each contacted household, interviewers asked to speak with the “youngest male 18 or older who is at home.” If there is no eligible man at home, interviewers asked to speak with “the oldest woman 18 or older who lives in the household.” This systematic respondent selection technique has been shown empirically to produce samples that closely mirror the population in terms of age and gender. Weighting Non-response in telephone interview surveys produces some known biases in survey-derived estimates because participation tends to vary for different subgroups of the population, and these subgroups are likely to vary also on questions of substantive interest. For example, men are more difficult than women to reach at home by telephone, and people with relatively low educational attainment are less likely than others to agree to participate in telephone surveys. In order to compensate for these known biases, the sample data are weighted in analysis. Claritas Data Services provided the demographic weighting parameters for Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. The population parameters are the demographic characteristics of households with adults age 18 and older, which are then compared with the sample characteristics to construct sample weights. The results have been weighted to adjust for variations in the sample relating to sex, age, race, and education. The weights are derived using an iterative technique that simultaneously balances the distributions of all weighting parameters. Statistical Tests PSRA calculated the effects of the sample weights on the statistical efficiency of the sample design, so that an adjustment can be incorporated into tests of statistical significance when using these data. This so-called “design effect” or “deff” represents the loss in statistical efficiency that results from systematically undersampling (through sample design and non-response) parts of the population of interest. The square root of the design effect should be multiplied by the standard error of a statistic in computing tests of statistical significance. Based on this calculation, we calculate the 95 percent confidence interval for results expressed as percentages in this study as plus or minus 5 percentage points for results near 50% based on the total sample. Response Rate PSRA calculates a response rate as the product of three individual rates: the contact rate, the cooperation rate, and the completion rate. Of the residential numbers in the sample, 50 percent were contacted by an interviewer and 47 percent agreed to participate in the survey. Eighty-seven percent were found eligible for the interview. Furthermore, 97 percent of eligible respondents completed the interview. Therefore, the final response rate is 23 percent.
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