The 15th annual "Education Next" survey investigates how Americans are responding to the worst pandemic since the influenza pandemic of 1919. In the realm of education, a desire for sweeping reform might well be expected, given the pandemic's particularly severe toll on K-12 schooling. While few children suffered serious illnesses, the…

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.…

Charter schools increasingly challenge both district and private schools for student enrollments in the United States. With more parents able to choose among the sectors, the success of each in attracting students will turn in part on the levels of satisfaction provided to families who enroll. We analyze data from two nationally representative…

Do Americans hold a consistent set of opinions about their public schools and how to improve them? From 2013 to 2018, over 5,000 unique respondents participated in more than one consecutive iteration of the annual, nationally representative "Education Next" poll, offering an opportunity to examine individual-level attitude stability on…

For 14 years, the "Education Next" annual survey has tracked American opinion on education policy. This year's survey, administered in May 2020, provides an early look at how the experiences of the past few months as the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools nationwide may shape Americans' views on education policy going forward. The survey's…

Education's political landscape has shifted dramatically over the past year. To the consternation of most school-district officials, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used the bully pulpit to promote charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits for private-school scholarships. To the distress of teachers unions, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down…

Over the past 25 years, charter schools have offered an increasing number of families an alternative to their local district schools. The charter option has proven particularly popular in large cities, but charter-school growth is often constrained by state laws that limit the number of students the sector can serve. The charter sector is the most…

With the 2020 presidential election campaign now underway, education-policy proposals previously at the edge of the political debate are entering the mainstream. Support for increasing teacher pay is higher now than at any point since 2008, and a majority of the public favors more federal funding for local schools. Free college commands the…

The year 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the "Education Next" poll on K-12 education policy, offering "Education Next" the opportunity to take a retrospective look at public opinion on this vital topic. In 8 of the past 10 years, "Education Next" has also surveyed teachers on the subject and has seen some…

The Common Core State Standards initiative (CCSS) seeks to "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn" at various grade levels. For some education observers, CCSS will finally clarify for students, parents, and educators what students need to know and be able to do if they are to be prepared for…

A comprehensive exploration of 21st Century school politics, "Teachers versus the Public" offers the first comparison of the education policy views of both teachers and the public as a whole, and reveals a deep, broad divide between the opinions held by citizens and those who teach in the public schools. Among the findings: (1) Divisions…

In this article, the authors explore the following questions: How have Americans actually responded to these developments? Have they grown more supportive of the current direction of school reform, or are there instead signs of a backlash? And how do the views of teachers compare to those of the public at large? In addition to the views of the…

What do citizens of the United States and Germany think about their schools and school policies? This paper offers the first broad comparison of public thinking on education in the two countries. We carried out opinion surveys of representative samples of the German and American adult populations in 2014 that included experiments in which we…

Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., are more polarized today than they have been in nearly a century. Among the general public, party identification remains the single most powerful predictor of people's opinions about a wide range of policy issues. Given this environment, reaching consensus on almost any issue of consequence would…

This article presents the findings from the 2009 "Education Next" and Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) survey which asks if information changes minds about school reform. The authors fielded the survey in March of 2009, when newly elected president Barack Obama enjoyed public approval ratings above 60 percent.…