Education Week - August 30, 2017 - 10

WHAT DO AMERICANS THINK OF K-12 SCHOOLS?
Phi Delta Kappa International's annual poll of Americans' attitudes toward education finds
more people rating the nation's schools highly this year than in the last 40 years. The survey
also finds growing interest in career education, and mixed support for school diversity.
Percentage who grade the nation's schools A or B

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24%
2017

20%
1981

Importance of a racially and ethnically
diverse student body

Should public high schools offer
career-related courses if it means students
would spend less time in academic courses?

National totals, 2017

National totals, 2017
100
90
80

Whites

86

82%

70

25

Percentage

60

48%

50
40

22

30
20

13

10
0

11

Job or career
skills classes
Should offer

Blacks

Certificate or
license programs

13

Should not offer

15
72%

Do parents want their children to attend
racially diverse schools?
Parents of school-age children, 2017
100
90
80

Percentage

70

Hispanics

60

24

50
40

57%

13

30

25

20

20
10
0

All else
equal

Extremely/very important
Somewhat important
Not so/not at all important

If longer commute is
required to get to the
more diverse school

Prefer racially diverse school
Prefer school with mostly same race

Percentages may not add up to 100 due to rounding.

Does a school's economic diversity affect the learning environment
for poor, middle-income, and wealthy students?
100

Parents of school-age children, 2017

90
80

Percentage

70
60
50

48%

41

39

40

50

42

43

30
20

8

10
0

For poor students
Better

Same

5
For middle-income students

10
For higher-income students

Worse
SOURCE: PDK Poll

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 30, 2017 | www.edweek.org

American Enterprise Institute,
who was not involved in the survey. President Donald Trump's and
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos'
high-profile and unsuccessful push
to cut education funding and launch
a large-scale private school voucher
program may have "engendered a
backlash resulting in increasing defense of traditional public schools,"
he said. "The national story has
definitely been pro-private, so the
traditional public school advocates
have girded their loins in support, so
to speak," and may have made conservatives more vocally supportive
of their public schools.
Fifty-two percent of Americans
polled by PDK this May opposed
publicly funding vouchers for private schools, and opposition significantly increases for religious school
vouchers. That's a slight increase in
support from 2014, however, when
two-thirds of respondents opposed
publicly funded vouchers. PDK has
asked about support for publicly
funded vouchers 20 times since
1972, said Joshua Starr, the chief
executive officer of PDK International, and there has never been a
majority in favor of paying for them.
Forty-six percent of public school
parents said they would move their
child if their tuition would be paid
at a private or parochial school-
though only 28 percent would leave
public school if they only got half of
private school tuition paid.

Growing Support for Public K-12

70%
60

U.S. Public Favors More
Focus on Career Studies

Americans seemed to be pushing
for less focus on standardized tests
as a measure of school quality, and
more analysis of how well schools
prepare students to be successful
adults after graduation, Starr said.
Sixty-five percent or more believed that public schools should get
more money to provide after-school
programs and mental, physical, and
dental health care for students who
would not have it otherwise.
"There's something missing from
both the policy conversation on
education and also the classroom;
people just want to see schools doing
more than they are currently doing,"
he said. "A lot of people who want
their kids going to college want
them to have interpersonal skills
and career skills as well."
The poll found that more than
80 percent of Americans believe
schools should offer "career skills"
and industry certificates or licensing
courses in schools. More than half of
those polled favored more careeroriented courses even if it meant
students spent less time in purely
academic courses.
However, both career-education
and college-expectation questions
revealed big gender gaps among
parents of public school students.
Sixty-four percent of parents whose
oldest child is a boy wanted more career-skills courses, compared to only
49 percent of parents of girls. And
while 55 percent of girls' parents

expected them to go to a four-year
college, only 39 percent of boys' parents expected their sons to earn at
least a bachelor's degree. In fact, 45
percent of the parents didn't expect
their sons to attend college at all.
"We in the field have been talking
about four-year college or bust, and
what parents are saying is yeah,
four-year college is important, but
a lot of parents are saying my kid
may not be going to college or may
be going to college and be working,"
Starr said.
Malkus said the gender gap in college expectations greatly surprised
him. "Nine out of 20 parents don't
expect their boy to go to college.
That's nuts," he said.

Mixed Interest in Diversity
For the first time, PDK also asked
how important it was for schools in
a community to have racially and
economically diverse student populations-and Americans' response
was somewhat lukewarm.
More than half of those polled said
racial and ethnic diversity was very
important and improves the school
learning environment for black,
white, and Hispanic students alike.
But most of that support came from
black and Hispanic respondents
and from liberals; only 48 percent
of white Americans and 43 percent
of Republicans polled thought racial
diversity was highly important. And
while 70 percent of parents said
they'd prefer to send their child to
a racially diverse school if all else
was equal, only 25 percent said they
would do the same if it lengthened
their child's commute to school.
"It's pretty difficult for people to
say diversity is bad," Malkus said,
but added: "What's interesting about
that is when there's a cost associated with it there is that huge difference in support. It goes directly
at the heart of why school segregation is such a stubborn problem."
There was even less support for
economic diversity-the primary
method of integrating schools
since the U.S. Supreme Court in
2007 ruled against race-targeted,
school-assignment systems. Only 48
percent of those polled thought economic integration improved learning for poor students, and 10 percent
thought going to a school with more
poor students would lead to worse
education for wealthier students.
"Diversity for its own sake may be
a value folks have, but any effort to
organize a school and school system
for diversity must be a value proposition," Starr said. "Folks prefer diversity, but they really don't want to
work for it. That's pretty much what
it comes down to."
The PDK poll was based on a random, representative sample of 1,588
adults across all 50 states, who were
interviewed in May by mobile or
land telephone in English or Spanish. The Gallup poll was based on
August telephone interviews with a
random, nationally representative
sample of 1,017 adults.
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - August 30, 2017

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