Seventy-four percent of the poll respondents said that the quality of education in Delaware schools is about the same or better than it is in the rest of the country, a significant gain over last year's 64 percent.

"When you ask people what they think about their schools, they think they're fine, but if you ask about education in general, they go with the perception they get through the newspapers and radio," said Rep. Bruce C. Reynolds, R-Country Woods, who is chairman of the House Education committee. But the poll has a purpose, he added: "It can help focus the debate."

The poll is conducted annually by the state-supported Delaware Education Research and Development Center at the University of Delaware, which in the late 1990s was finding a dramatic lack of confidence in the public school system.

At the time, students here were scoring below the national average in reading, writing, math and science, leaving only 31 percent of the 1997 poll respondents feeling that Delaware schools were equal to, let alone better than, schools in other places.

In 2002 and 2003, however, testing conducted nationwide by the federal government showed big improvements for Delaware students, putting them above the national average in those same subjects.

But statewide and nationally, on both national and state standardized tests, minority and low-income youngsters continue to lag behind their white and more affluent peers. No Child Left Behind, a key domestic initiative for President Bush, was designed to correct that academic achievement gap.

If the poll results are correct, though, Delawareans are skeptical that the federal law will accomplish that. Only 48 percent of the poll respondents said they believed the law, with its complicated system of rating schools, would help close the gap, although 53 percent said they thought it may help improve Delaware schools overall.

Nearly three-quarters of those polled said they do not believe student scores from a single test provided a fair picture of whether a school needed improvement.

Only 42 percent of the respondents said that they knew a great deal or a fair amount about No Child Left Behind. And nationally, other surveys are showing that only about 24 percent of Americans report that they know anything about the federal law.

Sen. Charlie Copeland, R-Greenville, and other lawmakers said they weren't surprised by the percentage of Delawareans who don't understand the No Child Left Behind Act.

"It's an incredibly dense, that is to say, thick piece of legislation," Copeland said.

Pollsters interviewed 938 respondents by telephone from November through January. The margin of error for the poll ranged from 2 to 4.9 percentage points.

The poll found broad support for full-day kindergarten for all children, which is available in only a few Delaware school districts. But the consensus broke down when it came to paying for all-day, with some saying they wanted "government" funding, others saying the "public or taxpayers" should fund it.

"I think the results show that some people forget that 'government money' and their taxes are the same thing," said Sen. F. Gary Simpson, R-Milford. "But cost is an issue. If you've got six classrooms of half-day kindergarten and go to full-day, you're going to have to double that space and hire more teachers if the program is going to be effective."

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner listed phasing in full-day kindergarten by 2008 as a priority in her State of the State speech and legislation on the issue is expected before the General Assembly leaves in July.