scholarly journals The 50th Annual PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

2018 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. NP1-NP24 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
National Sample ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Internet Service ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Annual Survey ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Metal Detectors

The 2018 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools finds that Americans trust and support teachers, but they draw the line at wanting their own children to join a profession they see as undervalued and low-paid. An overwhelming 78% of public school parents say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike for more pay. The 2018 poll also revealed that Americans lack strong confidence that schools can protect their children against a school shooting, but they favor arming police, expanding mental health screenings, and using metal detectors at school entrances over arming teachers. The poll also asked Americans about reforming the existing school system, spending to provide extra support to students with greater needs, comparing education today to education during earlier years, evaluating opportunities and expectations for various groups of children, affording college, valuing a college degree, changing school hours, and grading the schools. The lack of funding was identified as the biggest problem facing the local schools, the 19th consecutive year for such a result. The 2018 poll is PDK’s 50th annual survey. Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., produced this year’s poll using a random, representative, national sample of 1,042 adults with an oversample to 515 parents of school-age children. Sampling and data collection were provided by GfK Custom Research via its nationally representative, probability-based online KnowledgePanel®, in which participants are randomly recruited via address-based sampling to participate in survey research projects by responding to questionnaires online. Households without internet connections are provided with a web-enabled device and free internet service.

The 49th Annual PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. NP1-NP32 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Academic Preparation ◽  
After School ◽  
The Public ◽  
Annual Survey ◽  
Public Money ◽  
Landline Telephone

The 2017 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools finds that Americans overwhelmingly want schools to do more than educate students in academic subjects. While they value traditional academic preparation, Americans say they want schools to substantially help position students for their working lives after school, which means both more direct career preparation and efforts to develop students’ interpersonal skills. In addition, as in past years, the 2017 poll also shows little public support for using public money to send children to private schools. The more Americans know about how voucher programs work, the less likely they are to support them or to say they’d participate in them. The poll also asked Americans about valuing diversity in schools, measuring school quality, wrapping support around students, grading the public schools, and expecting students to attend college. The 2017 poll is PDK’s 49th annual survey. It is based on a random, representative, 50-state sample of 1,588 adults interviewed by cell or landline telephone, in English or Spanish, in May 2017. For the first time, this year’s study also includes a pair of statewide samples — focusing on Georgia and New York — which are covered in separate reports that were not published in the magazine but are available at the organization’s poll web site. Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., produced this year’s poll.

My Kids, Your Kids, Our Kids: What Parents and the Public Want from Schools

2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Jon Valant ◽  
Daniel Newark
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Intervention Program ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Community Schools ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nationally Representative

Background/Context School choice reforms could strengthen parents’ influence on school behaviors, since schools must appeal to parents in order to operate. If parents’ desires for schools differ from the broader public's desires for schools, then schools might pursue different goals and activities in systems emphasizing school choice. One popular hypothesis is that school-choosing parents, more than the public, want schools to prioritize their own students’ private interests over more collective social, economic, and political interests. Purpose/Objective We compare parents’ desires for their own children's schools with the U.S. public's desires for public schools. We make these comparisons with respect to the abstract goals that schools pursue, as well as schools’ more tangible behaviors. Population/Participants/Subjects We administered an online survey to nationally representative samples of parents and adults. We administered a second online survey to a national sample of adults. Intervention/Program/Practice The article consists of two studies. Study 1 compares parents’ and the public's beliefs about which abstract goals schools should prioritize. Respondents were randomly assigned to consider either schools in their community, schools around the country, or, if they had children, their own children's schools. They chose from goals that prioritized their students’ professional achievement (“Private Success”), the economy's needs (“Shared Economic Health”), and more collective social and political needs (“Democratic Character”). Study 2 compares parents’ and the public's beliefs about how schools should actually behave. Respondents were randomly assigned to consider either schools in their community, schools around the country, or their own children's schools. We asked about the basic structure and content of the school day, how schools should teach, and how to evaluate school performance. Research Design The studies consist of randomized experiments and related statistical analysis. Findings/Results We find remarkably little difference between parents’ desires for their children's schools and the public's desires for public schools. This is true both for the abstract goals that schools pursue and for schools’ more tangible behaviors. Conclusions/Recommendations Our findings suggest that the hypothesis that parents want schools to focus on their students’ private success at the expense of more collective goals is over-simplified. It may be, for example, that parents want their children to be well rounded in ways that also serve more collective social, political, and economic interests. We observe divisions in Americans’ views of the goals that schools should pursue, but these divisions are more connected to their political affiliation than parent status (with Republicans more focused than Democrats on Private Success).

Status, Growth, and Perceptions of School Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 016237372110305
Author(s):  
David M. Houston ◽  
Michael Henderson ◽  
Paul E. Peterson ◽  
Martin R. West
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Achievement Growth ◽  
Status Information ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Perceptions Of School

States and districts are increasingly incorporating measures of achievement growth into their school accountability systems, but there is little research on how these changes affect the public’s perceptions of school quality. We conduct a nationally representative online survey experiment to identify the effects of providing participants with information about their local public schools’ average achievement status and/or average achievement growth. Prior to receiving any information, participants already possess a modest understanding of how their local schools perform in terms of status, but they are largely unaware of how these schools perform in terms of growth. Participants who live in higher status districts tend to grade their local schools more favorably. The provision of status information does not fundamentally change this relationship. The provision of growth information, however, alters Americans’ views about local educational performance. Once informed, participants’ evaluations of their local schools better reflect the variation in district growth.

Strange Frame Fellows: The Evolution of Discursive Framing in the Opt-Out Testing Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Paquin Morel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
Open Coding ◽  
Over Time

Background/context In recent years, opposition to accountability policies and associated testing has manifested in widespread boycotts of annual tests—mobilized as the “opt-out movement.” A central challenge facing any movement is the need to recruit and mobilize participants. Key to this process is framing—a discursive tactic in which activists present social issues as problems that require collective action to solve. Such framing often relies on compatible political and ideological commitments among activists and potential recruits. Yet the opt-out movement has successfully mobilized widespread boycotts in diverse communities. How have participants in the movement framed issues relating to testing and accountability? Purpose/objective/research question/focus of study I explore the discursive tactics of participants in the opt-out movement by analyzing how they frame issues related to testing and accountability over time. I ask two research questions: (1) What frames did participants in opt-out-aligned social media groups use to convince others that standardized accountability tests are a problem and build support for the movement? (2) To what extent and how did the deployment of frames change over time? Research design I conducted a mixed-methods study combining qualitative content analysis to identify frames and computational analysis to describe their co-deployment over time. Data collection and analysis I compiled a text corpus of posts to opt-out-aligned social media pages from 2010–2014. I analyzed posts using open coding to identify frames used by participants in online communities. Frames were categorized by their orientation—the general way in which they framed the problem of testing and accountability. I then analyzed the co-deployment of frames using network analysis and hierarchical clustering. Conclusions/recommendations The longitudinal analysis of frames reveals key differences in the frames used by participants. While more politically oriented frames—those characterizing testing as a social issue affecting the public schools at large—were common in early stages of the movement, less overtly political frames—those characterizing testing as an individual issue affecting children and local schools or a technical issue—became more prominent over time. Over time, socially oriented frames became decoupled from other frames, showing independent patterns of deployment. This suggests that the movement may have benefited from de-emphasizing politically oriented frames, but that it lacked an overarching shared narrative, which has the potential to limit how it might affect accountability policies and testing.

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