(CN) — Most school districts say they are preparing students for the future, but whether that future prioritizes diversity or the rest of the world can in part be linked to the surrounding area’s political affiliation, according to a Pew Research Center analysis published Tuesday.
With K-12 education curriculum under increasing political scrutiny, Pew researchers looked to identify philosophical trends among 1,314 public school district mission statements.
Regardless of political affiliation and population dynamics, 80% of the visions Pew looked at place importance on future readiness. More than half of the mission statements also promised a “safe and healthy environment” or “parent and community involvement.”
“For the most part, schools in blue and red areas, their missions are largely the same,” explained Aaron Smith, director of Data Labs at Pew Research Center. “They want their kids to be safe and healthy. They want them to have success. After school, they largely want to make sure that they're involving parents in the community in their educational mission.”
Drilling into how communities voted in the 2020 presidential election, researchers identified several themes among the school districts located in areas that voted blue.
“We see a really big difference when it comes to issues around diversity and inclusion,” Smith said.
Half of the school districts in areas that supported Joe Biden in the last presidential election mention “inclusion, diversity and equity” in their mission statements. By comparison, only a quarter of Republican-leaning districts included similar terms.
Less than 7% of mission statements in school districts located in right-leaning areas specifically aimed to create equity and inclusion, compared to more than 20% schools located in left-leaning areas.
Politics aside, urban and suburban districts are more than twice as likely to have diversity in their mission statement compared to rural communities. School districts also tend to value diversity when they are located among high median income-earners or have a smaller percentage of white people.
Another notable difference comes with the prominence of the word “global.” Pew found “global” mentioned in 31% of school districts in Democratic-voting areas, and in 14% of areas that voted Republican.
Suburban school districts are also more likely to aim globally compared to urban and rural schools.
Slightly more school districts in right-leaning areas used the words “lifelong” and “citizen,” in their mission statements compared with schools in left-leaning areas.
While they can provide a broad view into local values, schools across the country adopted and update mission statements at different periods of time. Pulaski County Special School District in Little Rock, Arkansas, for example traces its guiding principles back to 1980 and has updated then twice since. Pennsylvania mandated school districts to submit mission statements to the state from 2006 to 2008.
An analysis on the effectiveness of 80 Midwestern school district mission statements published in International Education Studies last year found no links to academic achievement. Instead, researchers concluded "mission statements were a legacy practice which served the political spectacle, and practitioners adopted the practice out of conformity."
This research builds on Pew’s October 2022 survey analyzing how parents differed by political affiliation when it came to what students should learn in school.
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