Take a survey

The suveys linked to this page are active. 

For those in the teaching profession, this is a great time to take a survey and air your views on education, particularly as they relate to the importance of maintaining science standards, to the prospect of facing cutbacks in science education, and to an assessment of your own career.

While we may hear of overcrowding in classrooms, cutbacks in curricula, falling grades in math and science, and school closings, we should attempt to sort reality from fiction with the responses from those in the field and on the front lines of teaching.  We hear of the bad, but there is also the good.  Perhaps a survey can help us sort through the hearsay and find the hard facts.

During the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, which highlighted the discoveries of Galileo with his telescope 400 years ago, it was dismaying to learn of proposed cutbacks in science education, particularly in astronomy. 

To that end, it will be useful to know just how much and how many science programs, and astronomy programs in particular, were affected during IYA and to this day.  To find that out, it is the intent of the first survey on this page to poll those in the teaching profession to determine the truth and to find what may be done to stave off the prospect of future cutbacks. 

In addition, you may want to express your views more generally about the presentation of astronomical topics, whether or not you teach astronomy.  To that end, it is the intent of the second survey to gauge interest in other ways to present astronomical topics.

Please take time to take both surveys.  The first one may seem lengthy, but it's fast and easy to click in your responses.  The second survey goes even faster since it's shorter than the first.  In either survey, many questions will allow multiple answers; a few will not.  After you complete either survey, you will be directed back to the opening page of this website.

Click on either link (below), which will take you to the surveys prepared with the online company Zoomerang.  The company's server will record your responses anonymously.  Any contact information that you volunteer will not be shared with marketing firms or used in other online surveys.

Results of the surveys will be made available at a future date, after a statistically significant sample of responses has been recorded; so, check back with this site from time to time.  Thanks for visiting! 

Click here to launch The Galileo Survey.

Click here to launch The Kepler Survey.