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ERIC Number: EJ1379764
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 12
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1539-9664
EISSN: EISSN-1539-9672
Partisan Rifts Widen, Perceptions of School Quality Decline: Results of the 2022 "Education Next" Survey of Public Opinion
Houston, David M.; Peterson, Paul E.; West, Martin R.
Education Next, v23 n1 p8-19 Win 2023
These are the results of the 16th annual "Education Next" survey, conducted in May 2022 with a nationally representative sample of 1,784 American adults. While last year's survey revealed sharp changes in support for a variety of education reforms (EJ1348128), public opinion on most issues has since rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. There are, however, some exceptions to this pattern. Americans' perceptions of local school quality have declined since 2019, and support for homeschooling has risen over the course of the pandemic. Public enthusiasm for universal pre-K has increased dramatically, and support for higher teacher salaries is at its highest level in the survey's history. The "Education Next" survey also reveals a more complex and nuanced story about the shifting relationship between political partisanship and public opinion on education issues. First, attitudes toward a series of longstanding debates are increasingly organized around political-party identification. Using "Education Next" survey data from 2007 to 2022, the average difference in opinion between the two major parties has grown larger on many of the items the survey has tracked over the years. Second, there is an emergence of new issues that reflect exceptionally large partisan splits. Over the past two years, the survey has introduced questions about schools' responses to the pandemic and recent debates about how to teach about the role of race in America's past and present. In contrast to many of the education-policy topics that are explored in prior iterations of the survey, respondents' positions on these issues appear to map more directly to their partisan identities. However, there are notable exceptions to both patterns, resisting a simple narrative. Although rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans have diverged over time in their attitudes toward charter schools, members of the two parties continue to converge in their attitudes toward annual standardized testing. While the pandemic ushered in intense partisan disagreement over the benefits of face masks in schools, it enhanced bipartisan interest in the option for high school students to take some classes online.
Education Next Institute, Inc. Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman 310, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Fax: 617-496–4428; e-mail: Education_Next@hks.harvard.edu; Web site: https://www.educationnext.org/the-journal/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education; Early Childhood Education; Preschool Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A