Questions on Sex, Religion : U.S.-Backed Teacher Poll Is Too Personal for Some

A federally financed survey is asking schoolteachers across the country whether they pray, how often they have sex, what are their views on abortion and mercy-killing and whether they voted for Ronald Reagan or Walter F. Mondale in the last presidential election.

The survey is being conducted by the National Center for Education Information, a private group that publishes newsletters and reports, with a $72,461 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s secretary’s discretionary fund. Former Secretary Terrel H. Bell approved the grant last year.

An Oregon schools administrator has ordered teachers under her supervision not to cooperate with the survey. Shirley A. Woods, assistant superintendent of instruction with the Corvallis, Ore., school system, also complained about the survey to People for the American Way, a liberal, anti-censorship group.

“I felt the questions were entirely inappropriate. I think that is a kind of probing that simply is unconscionable,” Woods said on Friday.

Parts of a Profile

The center’s director, C. Emily Feistritzer, said the sex question was only one of many bits of information she was seeking so that she can piece together a profile of America’s classroom teachers. Only a few teachers have left the question blank; a few others have written “none of your business,” she said.

The teachers surveyed were promised anonymity, although the forms were coded so that the center could send letters to those who did not mail in their responses.

Feistritzer, who is a former teacher, said she was not trying to be “the Kinsey of American education,” but was attempting to prepare a profile that would be helpful in hiring the estimated 1 million new teachers America’s schools are expected to need by the early 1990s.

The query about sex was near the bottom of a list of 28 activities the teachers were asked about.

“We asked teachers’ stand on abortion, on the death penalty, on almost every current issue that I can think of,” Feistritzer said. The teachers also were asked if they ever prayed to God, if they smoked and what their political affiliations were.

Principals Picked Teachers

The center wrote principals at 500 schools in September, asking them to distribute the questionnaires to four teachers at random. The organization is still trying to persuade some of the teachers to mail the questionnaires back. It plans to report the results in February, Feistritzer said.

Loye W. Miller of the Department of Education said the department did not review the questions before the poll was sent out. He refused to comment on the propriety of the sex question, but said: “It obviously makes us take another look at whether we should have review rights over something like this that we give a grant to.”