This TIME magazine poll was conducted by telephone Aug. 17-19, 2010, among a representative national random sample of 1,000 Americans, ages 18 and older, throughout America. The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately +/- 3 percentage points. The margin of error is higher for subgroups. Surveys are subject to other error sources as well, including sampling coverage error, recording error and respondent error. Abt SRBI Public Affairs conducted all interviewing. The full TIME poll questionnaire and trend data may be found at Abt SRBI.

Sure most people would like improvements but wonder how many support corporations taking over and running schools like a business vs those who think they should remain public and funded better. Worry that polls like these will just be used to continue the march towards privatization citing disillusionment with the current system.

to fund public schools then schools would be adequately funded - which pretty much tells me all I need to know about this poll.

how many people support merit pay. I mean, how do they think that would work?

And I'm not a teacher or in any way connected with education.

Tenure does not guarantee lifetime employment. Tenure guarantees due process and protects teachers for capricious administrators and bad school boards. Virtually every school system in the US has two additional policies along with Tenure. They are removal for cause and reduction in force. Those policies allow teachers to be re-mediated or removed if there are problems in the classroom and in the case of a financial crisis there is a non-biased process to decide who stays and who goes.

The question as asked is a push poll. Don't expect valid information to come from such a biased question.