Bubbles
Every year, we at EdChoice conduct the Schooling in America Survey, asking a representative sample of Americans about the nation’s education system.
We have traditionally polled people once, during the summer. Because of the massively dislocating effect that Covid-19 has had on schools and families, we decided to survey the nation in two waves this year: first at the end of the 2019-2020 school year; and again after children head back to school.
The results from the first wave are in and are fascinating. All the data are available here, but several findings are worth highlighting in particular.
A substantial number of parents are scared their child will contract the coronavirus. When asked about their concerns right now, parents’ top result was “my child getting exposed to the coronavirus” with 50% of respondents being either “extremely” or “very” worried about it. “My child falling behind academically” came in second with 46% of parents being “extremely” or “very” worried about it, and “my child feeling socially isolated” came in third at 44%. “Missing work” was well behind these, with only 34% of parents “extremely” or “very” worried about it.
Remote learning was a mixed bag. Parents were pretty evenly split on their impressions of their child’s progress after schools closed. With respect to academics, 35% thought that their children were doing better than before schools closed, 29% thought they were doing about the same, and 36% thought they were doing worse. The story was similar with emotional development (a 37%/33%/30% split) and social development (a 34%/30%/36% split).
Private, Home, and Charter Schools could grow this year. When parents were asked where they planned to send their children to school this fall, only 54% said their public district school (for reference, 82% of students attend public district schools). Where are students going to go? Eighteen percent of respondents said private school, 17% said they plan to homeschool, and 11% plan to send their children to a public charter school. Ordinarily, only 10% of students attend private schools, 3% are homeschooled, and 5% attend public charter schools. (One note of caution, some of this could be due to the sample of survey respondents not being perfectly representative of the enrollment rates of the general population.)
Black and Hispanic parents are more optimistic about remote learning. Parents were asked the likelihood that they would choose remote learning if it was offered this fall and Black parents were most likely to say that they were “extremely” or “very” likely to choose it, at 51% of respondents. Hispanic parents were the next most likely at 50%, and white parents were far behind at only 39%. This probably shouldn’t surprise us, as Black parents had the largest proportion indicate that they were “not at all” comfortable with their children returning to school this fall, at 31% of respondents, while only 21% of Hispanic families and 20% of white families felt the same way.
Black parents reported higher levels of emotional wellbeing for their children after school closures than any other group. Forty-nine percent of Black parents said that their child’s emotional wellbeing was “much” or “somewhat” better after schools closed than before. That compares to only 35% of Hispanic families and 34% of white parents.
(For those curious about the sampling, the nationally representative total sample was 1,605. Above and beyond that national sample, there was additional surveying of school parents and 805 of them were reached. The survey was conducted online and over the phone between May 22nd and June 2nd.)
So what can we make of all of this?
First, uniform responses to the pandemic are going to be challenging. If, instead of close to one-third, one-third, one-third splits on remote learning, parent opinion was 75% to 25% in one direction or the other, schools would have a better idea of what to do to keep the most people happy this fall. But choosing remote learning looks to alienate as many people as it keeps happy, and the reverse is true as well. This spread of experiences has been an interesting and consistent finding. There has not been one uniform experience of remote learning, so making sweeping statements about it will almost always be incomplete.
Second, the landscape is changing. It will be very interesting to see if parents follow through on their plans to change where their children go to school. If they do, it will be a seismic shift in the American educational landscape. Even if they don’t transfer en masse, remember that the American education system is enormous, with more than 55 million children spread across public, private, and homeschools. Even a few percentage points of change mean millions of children moving from one school type to another.
Third, racial differences loom large. There are serious and substantial differences in opinion between Black, Hispanic, and white parents when it comes to their fears about the coronavirus and their willingness to participate in remote learning. Educational leaders should take this to heart. When surveying their own school communities, school and district leaders should make sure to have accurate samples of all racial and ethnic groups to make sure they are getting the full picture. What’s more, the finding that so many Black parents saw remote learning as a better environment for their child’s emotional wellbeing should force us all to ask serious questions about the traditional school environments that Black children attend.
We continue to survey teachers, parents, and the general public about their opinions on schools, the coronavirus, and much more. It will be interesting to see how these opinions change, or don’t, as children head back to school this fall.
