(The Hill) – Satisfaction with the K-12 education system is rising after a piercing decline last year, and experts say the rhetoric surrounding the institution inspires hope despite little concrete change.
A novel Gallup poll found that Americans’ satisfaction increased by 7 percentage points after hitting a record low of 36 percent in 2023.
Experts say the increased satisfaction is likely due to perceptions of the way politicians and the media talk about the K-12 system, as the system still struggles with similar problems as last year.
“When I look again at the Gallup polls and parent satisfaction with K-12 education, what strikes me is that the increase of about seven percentage points this year is actually back to levels somewhat similar to pre-pandemic levels,” said Chris Curran, director of the Education Policy Research Center at the University of Florida.
Although satisfaction has declined during the pandemic, the school system has not recovered in any significant ways over the past year.
The pandemic-related learning loss, a major concern among parents and policymakers, still shows that students entering high school have a full year behind scientific.
Other problems such as chronic absenteeism persist, and schools will struggle this school year after COVID-19 emergency funding dries out in September.
“I think there’s a piece of the puzzle or a component that probably has to do with education policy. In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of attention in the media and among politicians on schooling and education, there’s been a lot of legislation in the states that focuses on things like critical race theory or the content of classes or policies on LGBTQ communities and how they’re represented in teaching materials within the curriculum and in schools,” Curran said.
And while the policy still exists, Curran believes it “doesn’t get quite as much attention and coverage as it did in previous years.”
“At least from my perspective, we have seen perhaps a little less of that in the past year, just some calming of the waters in terms of political attention to education,” he added.
While K-12 schools may not receive the same level of attention as they did during the pandemic, they have not escaped unscathed over the past year.
Last year, protections for transgender people varied from state to state. California passed the first state law Teachers are not required to tell parents if their child uses a different name or pronoun unless they request a change in the official registry.
In other Republican-led states, teachers are required to tell parents if their child identifies as transgender.
While states on both sides of the political spectrum have their views, both Democrats and Republicans have seen a significant augment in satisfaction with the K-12 system.
While the gap in satisfaction between the two parties is wider than ever, satisfaction has increased by 8 percentage points to 33 percent among Republicans and by 9 percentage points to 53 percent among Democrats, according to Gallup.
And there are different views as to which side deserves credit for the increased satisfaction.
“The Democrats have been very focused on schools” as a solution to inequality “and the message of those parties has been that we do schooling for ourselves, for our own children, to help them get ahead in the world. Well, that’s a zero-sum game. Not everyone can get ahead. And if the job of public education is to address inequality, then you only have to look at our highly unequal society and see the extent to which schools are failing,” said Jack Schneider, director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“We’re finally hearing Democrats talk about education as something that serves the common good, strengthens our community, and is worth standing up and fighting for. And why are we hearing this? Not because Democrats have suddenly come to this realization on their own. But because the Republican Party has made this sharp shift to an extreme position that is deeply antithetical to the idea of public education,” he added.
In recent years, the school choice movement has made progress in several states with the creation of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), leading to criticism that Republicans are abandoning public education.
Under an ESA, parents who are interested in home schooling or private schooling receive a certain amount of money from the government each year.
And some argue that the greater freedom in the K-12 system, which allows parents to choose the education they want for their children, has improved sentiment.
“I think there’s a direct correlation between parental satisfaction and the increased freedom and opportunity in education that comes with the implementation of school choice programs in more and more states. So the satisfaction rate in K-12 will continue to rise the more we support parents in finding the right educational environment for their child,” says Randan Steinhauser, senior adviser at The Policy Circle, a nonprofit that helps women become leaders in their communities.
“So that’s not surprising. And the more we remove regulations and burdens from families and give them the opportunity to explore different options, I think the satisfaction rate will go up, which bodes really well for the future of education,” she added.
