The Gallup organization also conducts a poll on the public's views on education, publishing the results in Kappan magazine. Like Public Agenda, Gallup gauges opinions of current issues in the field. The Educator's Dilemma Public Agenda and Gallup are not alone in taking the public's pulse on attitudes toward education. Reform advocates, labor organizations, and other politically involved groups are increasingly citing polls as evidence of support for, or failure of, public education. That polls are becoming a prominent player in education policymaking is no surprise.
Public schools conduct their business in highly public and political environments.
Polls do provide information that can help leaders understand the public's values and preferences, but their allure ought to be tempered. The promise that one poll might offer a view into the future or a people's mandate in a single document, though tempting, is hollow. A Snapshot in Time When polls first appeared in this country in the early 1900s, citizens held conflicting sentiments about their political leaders. For those who believed in this new technology, distrusting this voice of the people amounted to distrusting the common man himself. For others, however, polls were the worst aberration of democracy, reducing sound thinking to sound bites and creating an environment in which leaders failed to lead.