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Despite interest in online learning for meeting student needs at scale, existing research finds relatively low levels of engagement in most forms of virtual learning, especially among economically disadvantaged students. This is concerning as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a dramatic increase in remote learning among students and educators who did not specifically opt into the model. We study an early innovative effort to virtually serve such K-12 students and teachers and to capitalize on the unique advantages of distance learning to promote educational equity amid the pandemic. This five-week, largely synchronous, summer program served nearly 12,000 rising 4th-9th graders, mostly low-income students of color. To expand access to excellent educators, "mentor teachers," selected based on merit, provided PD and videos of themselves teaching daily lessons to "partner teachers" across the country. We interviewed a representative sample of teachers and analyzed educator, parent, and student surveys. Our study adds to the existing online learning literature by illustrating that it is possible to virtually engage a more generalizable set of students and teachers than have previously been studied and to use technology to extend the reach of talented teachers. Strategies for online engagement that scholars have identified when studying more specialized groups pre-pandemic appear relevant with a more generalizable population, such as the inclusion of meaningful content and a synchronous delivery format. Consistent with prior research, teachers appreciate receiving adaptable curricular materials and differentiated PD. Findings have implications for future uses of online learning, during periods of disruption and more typical times.

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. There are, however, some exceptions to this pattern. Americans' perceptions of local school quality have declined since 2019, and support for homeschooling has risen over the course of the pandemic. Public enthusiasm for universal pre-K has increased dramatically, and support for higher teacher salaries is at its highest level in the survey's history. The "Education Next" survey also reveals a more complex and nuanced story about the shifting relationship between political partisanship and public opinion on education issues. First, attitudes toward a series of longstanding debates are increasingly organized around political-party identification. Using "Education Next" survey data from 2007 to 2022, the average difference in opinion between the two major parties has grown larger on many of the items the survey has tracked over the years. Second, there is an emergence of new issues that reflect exceptionally large partisan splits. Over the past two years, the survey has introduced questions about schools' responses to the pandemic and recent debates about how to teach about the role of race in America's past and present. In contrast to many of the education-policy topics that are explored in prior iterations of the survey, respondents' positions on these issues appear to map more directly to their partisan identities. However, there are notable exceptions to both patterns, resisting a simple narrative. Although rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans have diverged over time in their attitudes toward charter schools, members of the two parties continue to converge in their attitudes toward annual standardized testing. While the pandemic ushered in intense partisan disagreement over the benefits of face masks in schools, it enhanced bipartisan interest in the option for high school students to take some classes online.

Activists fed up with school closures, masking policies, and curricular choices interrupted school-board meetings around the nation. The parental protests, together with school responses to the COVID pandemic, acquired a partisan edge. Republican and Democratic governors regularly disagreed about the necessity of mask wearing, social distancing, and vaccinations for the young. The districts that kept school doors closed longest were usually located in Democratic-leaning places the media labels blue. How have American parents at large responded to these conflicts? Have measures designed to slow the COVID pandemic antagonized them? Have progressive attempts to introduce concepts rooted in Critical Race Theory into school curricula weakened parental attachments to district schools? Are more parents fleeing to alternative forms of schooling? Have education policy and practice become more partisan? The authors asked about these matters in the Education Next survey administered online to a nationally representative sample of parents of school-age children in May 2022.

'I DON'T THINK PARENTS should be telling schools what they should teach,' commented former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, while seeking a return to office in 2021. His Republican [...]

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC PROMPTED the largest disruption to American education in living memory. At the onset of the crisis in spring 2020, nearly every K-12 school, public and private, closed [...]

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.

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 effects of the pandemic on the nation's youth were nonetheless dramatic. Schools across the country were shuttered for months, some for more than a year. State-mandated testing, a tool for holding schools accountable, was largely abandoned. Remote instruction, implemented under crisis conditions, failed to live up to the claims of virtual-learning enthusiasts. Learning loss was severe, especially among children from low-income families. According to parents, children's friendships and social ties suffered. Even their physical fitness was put at risk. Obesity, drug abuse, mental health challenges, and teenage suicides appeared to be on the rise. In desperation, some parents shifted their children from district schools to private schools, homeschooling, and other options that provided more in-person learning. The authors ask what is the state of public opinion as parents and school leaders nationwide transition back to in-person schooling? Is the public demanding innovation that can make up for educational losses over the past year? Or do people want a quiet return to the familiar? This survey is a continuation of Education Next's long-standing annual poll of public attitudes on education issues. This year, they interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,410 adults. The survey repeats many questions asked in past surveys, making it possible to see how the pandemic has affected public opinion. As in previous years, the survey contains a number of experiments in which the sample is split into two or three groups at random and then each group is asked a variation on the same question. These experiments allow the researchers to gauge how different question wordings and the provision of additional information affect participants' responses.

The 15th annual "Education Next" survey, conducted in June 2021, yields a host of specific results that reveal one large fact about the current state of public opinion on American education: The public is cautious--extremely cautious. In the presence of a still-circulating COVID-19 virus, a large percentage of parents and the broader public want schools to take strong measures to keep children safe as they return to school. Yet many parents are not ready to risk the injection of a COVID vaccine into their child's arm, even as government agencies testify to its safety and effectiveness. In this article, the authors report on the 2021 follow-up survey to polls of parents of school-age children that was administered in May and November 2020, enabling them to track children's schooling experiences over the course of the pandemic. In late May and June, the authors interviewed a representative sample of 2,022 parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade. Every parent then answered a series of questions about each of their children. The survey oversampled Black and Hispanic parents, as well as parents with children in private and charter schools, which allows more-precise comparisons between racial and ethnic groups and between school sectors.

Chester Finn, president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a frequent Education Next contributor, likes to recount a story from his time working as a senior official at [...]

The 2020 Education Next Survey reveals a paradox related to what American parents think about the quality of the instruction their children received after schools closed their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The parents of a substantial majority of school-aged children--71%--think their kids learned less than they would have in school. At the same time, parents of 72% of children say they are satisfied with the instruction and activities provided by schools during the closure. What experiences account for these seemingly contradictory opinions? And how did those experiences vary across social groups and the nation's district, charter, and private school sectors? Since schools closed, commentators have used a variety of methods to understand the likely implications of this episode for student learning and what it bodes for the future, from analyzing school districts' remote-learning plans to tracking reports of homeschooling on social media. Yet there is a lack of a thorough and systematic picture of what American families experienced during the pandemic. New data from the 14th annual Education Next public-opinion survey can help to close this gap. The survey was administered to a nationally representative sample of 1,249 parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade whose schools closed during the pandemic, including oversamples of parents who identify as Hispanic and parents who identify as Black. These parents answered questions about each of their children whose school closed, including 2,147 children in total. Data was also gathered from a nationally representative sample of 490 K-12 teachers whose schools closed because of the pandemic, enabling the authors to compare what parents reported receiving to what teachers said they delivered.

President Joe Biden has made reopening a majority of K-8 schools for in-person instruction a priority for his administration's first 100 days, with the goal of getting more American students safely back into the classroom. Yet neither information gathered so far by researchers, nor data reported by the federal government and the states, can say where the nation stands with respect to that goal. Nearly halfway through the 2020-21 school year, it is unknown how American schools have adapted amid the pandemic--and what American families are experiencing as a result. In November and December 2020, the authors surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,155 American parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade, including oversamples of parents who identify as Hispanic and parents who identify as Black. They also oversampled parents with children in private and charter schools, making it possible to compare their experiences with those making use of the traditional district sector. Each parent surveyed answered questions about the schooling experiences of each of their children in kindergarten through 12th grade, including 3,762 children in total. They also asked them a set of questions about schools and school policies in the United States in order to see if those experiences have altered parents' views (see sidebar Gauging the Pandemic's Effects on Parental Opinion). The data reveals that more than half of U.S. students are receiving instruction entirely remotely this school year, while 28% of students receive instruction that is fully in person. Of the 19% of students in hybrid models, in-person instruction varies from one to five days a week. The parents of most students remain broadly satisfied with the instruction and activities available from their children's schools, yet the parents of 60% of students report that their child is learning less than would be the case absent the pandemic. Satisfaction levels are highest--and reports of learning loss least common--for students attending school in person. The hybrid model appears to offer no advantage over fully remote instruction. The authors document large differences across sectors in the frequency of in-person instruction. Well over half of students enrolled in district and charter schools receive all their instruction fully remotely, while less than one quarter receive all of their instruction in person. The percentages are nearly reversed for children attending private schools: 60% receive instruction in person and just 18% receive their instruction remotely. They also provide the first evidence on the relationship between in-person instruction and the incidence of COVID. The availability and usage of in-person instruction is unrelated to COVID incidence at the start of the 2020-2021 school year, when most districts made their reopening plans. By November, however, students were most likely to be attending school fully in person in counties where the virus was spreading most rapidly.

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 nationally representative sample of 4,291 adults includes an oversampling of teachers and of those who identify themselves as Black and Hispanic and examines public opinion on issues at the core of education-policy debates as the U.S. heads into the height of the 2020 presidential campaign. The survey's top findings cover: (1) teacher pay; (2) school spending; (3) online education; (4) school choice; (5) opinion of public schools and teachers; (6) free college; and (7) populism and education policy.