Most Americans agree that public school teachers should get paid more money and treated with more respect, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.
In light of National Teacher Appreciation Week this week, The Huffington Post, in collaboration with YouGov, conducted a nationally representative poll on the topic of teacher appreciation. The survey results suggest most Americans think teachers deserve a week dedicated to appreciating them, if only because this group does not get enough respect the other 51 weeks of the year.
Most of the 1,000 survey participants indicated that they feel positively about the public school teachers in their community. This held true no matter the respondents' age, income or region.
Most survey participants also said they think teachers are underpaid. Participants who identified as black, were Democrats or had household incomes over $80,000 were more likely to say teachers are underpaid. Republicans and those living in the northeast were less likely to say so.
Finally, most respondents said they think teachers are underappreciated by society at large.
We also asked our own Twitter followers whether they think teachers are shown enough appreciation. While some teachers said they feel appreciated by the students and parents in their community, they said they felt less valued by society.
Let us know what you think with the hashtag #HPHeartsTeachers. Below are some of the responses we received.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted April 28-30 among U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the poll's methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov's reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.
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