With children back for another school year and elected officials debating the fate of "failing schools," a newly released national survey by Teachers' Insurance Plan reveals that public school parents have their own answers that run counter to some of the solutions currently on the table.

When given the choice, 65 percent of the public school parents surveyed would rather see more money go to public education than toward a tax cut. That preference had wide support within virtually all demographic groups surveyed, including parents of children in private schools, of whom 55 percent agreed. When asked to set priorities for schools, Americans overall ranked class size and teacher salaries at the top of their list.

The survey also revealed that public school parents believe standardized testing forces teachers to "focus too much attention on subjects to be tested" to the detriment of a broader education. When faced with a school that is failing on standardized tests, however, 54 percent of these parents believe that education funding should be increased to "bring up the quality of the education" being provided rather than developing alternative programs.

One such program, school vouchers, often cited as an answer to failing schools, proved highly unpopular in the survey. Just 35 percent of Americans overall support the creation of a voucher program to improve the education system. The survey is posted online at www.teachers.com/Survey-Parents-School-Funding.html.

For years, the AFT has been beating the drums in Congress and elsewhere about the desperate need for modernization and reconstruction of our nation's schools--but efforts led by the Clinton White House to get funding were rebuffed countless times.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their effect on the economy, however, Felix J. Rohatyn, managing director of the investment firm Lazard Freres, writing in the Sept. 25 Wall Street Journal, is floating the idea of a huge federal school construction project on the scale of Eisenhower's National Highway System.

"Our schools are in the worst shape of any category, worse even than our sewers," Rohatyn writes. "It would take $127 billion to bring our schools into good overall physical condition, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and over $300 billion to meet the costs of rising enrollment and installing modern technological infrastructure. If education is indeed a priority, as President Bush rightly claims it to be, the physical condition of our schools and their safety is as important as their curriculum."