WASHINGTON (CN) — Researchers say parents of children in primary education are further apart than ever in what they believe children should learn at school, including about gender identity and slavery — based on whether they vote Democrat or Republican.
A new Pew Research Center survey of parents with children in K-12 schools reported that Republican and Democratic parents have widely different views on what their children should learn at school, and the influence they have with local school boards on what public K-12 schools are teaching.
The report comes as more than 60% of K-12 parents have told researchers that the first year of the pandemic had a negative effect on their children’s education. Pew Research Center released an analysis exploring how parents assess the pandemic’s impact on their children’s education and well-being, with the National Assessment of Educational Progress's findings that remote learning in the early stages of the pandemic negatively impacted educational advancement.
Experts say anxiety around these effects has helped worsen polarization between parents with different ideologies. Stephen Farnsworth, a political sciences and international affairs professor & director at the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at University of Mary Washington, pointed out how Republican campaigns have capitalized on these anxieties for political gain. He said they are also using some parents’ anger over “culture war” worries that their child may learn about LGBTQ issues or critical race theory in public schools — although K-12 schools do not teach CRT — to fuel bids for local and state offices.
“There has been a very effective general movement to generate hostility aimed at education bureaucracies,” Farnsworth said.
Republican strategist John Feehery of EFB Advocacy said in an email that “Republican parents are losing faith in public schools and many of them are migrating their kids to Catholic or private schools.
“School boards and teacher unions are not listening to the concerns of these parents and the results could be catastrophic for public education. I think there has been a long Covid hangover where the intransigence of the local school board has severed the trust that many parents had in the process.”
Pew’s survey of 3,251 U.S. parents with children in K-12 schools, conducted between September to October 2022, reflected this divide in public opinion by political party, despite overall satisfaction levels with local school districts.
Republican parents with children in K-12 schools are about twice as likely as Democratic parents to say parents don’t have enough influence, or 44% vs. 23%. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say school boards have too much influence, and differ over the amount of input they think they have over what their children are learning in school.
Republican and Democratic parents are equally likely to say that teachers and administrators at their children’s schools have values similar to their own. About 40% of all parents said they are satisfied with the amount of input they have in what their children learn.
When it comes to issues like gender identity, parents split. About 31% say they would prefer their children learn that whether someone is a boy or a girl is determined by their sex assigned at birth, while 31% want children to learn that someone can identify as a different sex than they were assigned at birth. About 37% say their children shouldn’t learn this in school.
On the issue of slavery, 49% say they would prefer that their children learn that the legacy of slavery still affects the position of Black people in American society today. But 42% prefer that their children learn that slavery is part of American history but doesn’t affect the present position of Black people in American society.
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