Last week, we at EdChoice released our annual Schooling in America survey. For the past ten years, we have asked a representative sample of Americans a battery of questions about the American education system. Each year, it gives us the opportunity to see what Americans think about our nation’s schools. It also gives us the chance to see how opinions have changed over time.
I can’t give every finding justice, but here are five things that stood out to me.
General opinion on education doesn’t change that much.
The survey asks Americans if they believe that the education system is heading in the right direction or if it is on the wrong track. Looking at the last decade of responses, we don’t see a great deal of change.
In 2013, 62% of Americans thought that the education system was on the wrong track and 26% thought it was headed in the right direction. By 2022, it was 61% wrong track and 34% right direction. When we ask parents specifically, we see a similar result.
In 2014, 54% of parents thought schools were on the wrong track and 40% thought it was headed in the right direction. By 2022 it was 52% wrong track and 48% right direction.
There have been two presidential elections, a pandemic, the Royals have won the World Series, and there have been a host of other unexpected events in that time period, and yet, opinions on schools have barely budged.
Opinions on school choice policies have changed.
In the first four years of the survey (2013 to 2016) support for education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, and charter schools all declined among the general population. After starting with levels of support between 60 and 66%, they dropped to between 52 to 59% over that time period.
Since then, though, there has been a substantial increase. At the peak of school choice support in 2020, 81% of Americans said they supported education savings accounts, 74% said that they supported tuition tax credits, 73% said that they supported vouchers, and 72% said that they supported charter schools. Those numbers have declined slightly, but education savings accounts are still up 12 points from 2013, tax credits are up 5 points, vouchers are up 9 points, and charter schools are up 6 points.
People have no idea how much we spend on schools.
In our 2022 survey, 71% of Americans and 81% of school parents underestimated how much money their local public schools spend. We ask respondents to estimate how much their local public schools spend and then use their location to compare their guess to the true amount. The median response for the general population was $8,000 per student and the median response for parents was $5,000 when the true numbers ranged from $8,287 to $25,273 depending on location.
Most parents are happy with their child’s school, but a significant minority of dissatisfied parents exists.
Putting together those parents who responded that they were either “very” or “somewhat” happy with their child’s school, we see that 69% of public school parents, 72% of charter school parents, 78% of private school parents, and 73% of homeschool parents are satisfied with their child’s schooling. Even if we set aside that being “somewhat satisfied” is not exactly a ringing endorsement, 31% of public school parents being either “very” or “somewhat” dissatisfied translates to a lot of people. We’re talking probably north of 10 million parents there that are not happy with their child’s school.
Different parents want different things from schools.
We asked traditional public, charter, private, and homeschool parents the top three reasons why they chose the school or learning environment that they did. Traditional public school parents prioritized proximity to home or work, academic quality, and the fact that they were assigned to the school. Charter parents prioritized academic quality, safety, and structure and discipline (tied with class size). Private school parents’ top three were academic quality, safety, and moral instruction. Homeschooling parents led with safety and one-on-one attention, and then academic quality.
Some of these findings are surprising. The fact that opinions on the general direction of education appear impervious to all outside events is not something I expected. Americans continuously failing to grasp how much money is spent on schools even though they have a strong incentive to know how and where their tax dollars are being spent surprised me as well.
But others are not. We are in a big, diverse country, so we shouldn’t be surprised that different parents prioritize different things when choosing their child’s school. We also should not be shocked to see school choice increasing in popularity as more and more people have more and more choices in their daily life. It was bound to bleed into schooling preferences. Schools’ responses to the pandemic likely played a role as well.
It will be interesting to continue following these trends into the future. One can only imagine what they will look like in another ten years’ time.
"Opinion" - Google News
September 30, 2022 at 07:52PM
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A Decade Of Public Opinion On Education - Forbes
"Opinion" - Google News
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