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A review of surveys finds Americans want schools to refocus on teaching and learning
It can be difficult to keep track of all of the contemporary debates roiling the politics of education. On any given day, news headlines might be highlighting our sharp disagreements over how best to teach about race and racism in America's past and present, the rights of gay and transgender students (and their parents), the passage of new school choice legislation, the ongoing legacy of pandemic-era learning loss, rising rates of chronic absenteeism, or the value of cell phones and artificial intelligence in schools-to name a few.
It would be both reductive and inaccurate to characterize these debates as mere distractions. Each of them reflect real differences in how Americans view the roles and responsibilities of schools in our large, diverse, and divided society. Yet a close look at the results of public opinion surveys reveals an important and often overlooked truth: the American public is less concerned about these hot-button issues than about the nuts and bolts of teaching and learning.
It has been a banner year for high-quality, scientifically rigorous polling of the public's attitudes toward education issues. Not all surveys are created equal, and some do a better job than others of assembling a representative sample of U.S. adults and eliciting their unvarnished views. In general, surveys that recruit participants by dialing random phone numbers or mailing random addresses-a time-consuming, complex, and increasingly expensive process-have a stronger track record than their proliferating counterparts that recruit participants via the Internet. Even after applying statistical adjustments to make their samples look more like the population as a whole, polls that recruit participants online are more likely to capture unusual subsets of the American public, whose views do not necessarily generalize to the entire country.
To get a clearer sense of what Americans want from their schools, I sought out surveys conducted over the last 12 months that employed phone-based or address-based sampling and that also inquired about education issues. I collected relevant surveys from some of the most well-established and respected names in public opinion research, such as Pew Research Center and Gallup. I also drew on the insights of high-quality surveys that focus more narrowly on education, such...