Texas Lyceum Poll: Concern About Education is Up

The Texas Lyceum has been doing an annual poll since 2007 on the issues of the time. It is, you could say a snapshot of what the Texas public has most concern about. Things change so rapidly now that last year’s non-issue becomes this year’s hot-button issue.

And this year’s poll, being released between Tuesday and today, found here, is no different.

This year’s poll, for instance shows that for the first time since it has conducted the poll Texans are more concerned about education than they are about the economy. More concerned about education than they are about immigration.

Texans, it seems, have been paying attention.

I wonder if timing had something to do with this? The poll was conducted over an 8-day interval from May 24^th to May 31^st, just at the same time the SB1/HB1 was being worked on, and the Education budget was getting worked over.

Note the graphic. This is a summary of the hot-button issues that Texans have identified from one year to the next, with the budget shortfall not shown before 2010 probably because Rick Perry said there wasn’t going to be one.

In 2011 nearly double the number of Texans who view immigration as their number one issue see education as the current issue of concern to them. On another graphic found in the PDF the trend is clear over the past three years that an increasing number of Texans think that Texas is on the wrong track (58%), while Texans who see their state going in the right direction still trend south (28%).

Now here is what I am wondering: I wonder how much Texans relate between these two poll questions, and I wonder whether they want to do something about it at the polls next year.