When viewed as a subset of respondents, teachers preferred Obama as well—but by a slightly smaller margin than K-12 respondents overall: 51 percent of teachers said they were voting for Obama, while 43 percent of teachers said they would vote for Romney.
Many of the president’s policy moves during his first term didn’t sit well with educators who resent the amount of testing that goes on in schools today—and the narrowing of the curriculum that has resulted. That could explain why a slightly smaller percentage of teachers favored Obama over Romney than K-12 stakeholders in general.
“Testing is overrated, doesn’t take into account poverty, and is not reflective of good or bad teaching,” said one teacher who plans to vote for Obama. “Both candidates have bad education plans; this is the lesser of two evils.”
A teacher in Ohio—where Republican Gov. John Kasich last year signed a bill that curbed the rights of teachers and other public employees to bargain collectively—said that experience was sobering.
“I’ve seen how the Republican Party treats educators,” this reader wrote. “I’ll vote Democrat from now on.”
A sampling of readers’ comments
Pro-Obama
“I believe that the Republicans eventually want to do away with all public education and privatize the whole system. I don’t believe that this is a direction we should be going.”
“I vehemently oppose for-profit schooling and vouchers, as they sap funding from the public schools that are already strapped financially.”
“I’m not thrilled with Obama’s approach to education, and I think his ill-considered ‘reforms’ of K-12 are bad for higher-ed as well. But he is better than the alternative on education.”
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