This week’s biggest story on forces shaping public education didn’t show up in the education section.
The New York Times published a new survey showing nine in ten Americans, with only slight variations by political party, believe the American political system is broken.
The belief that our political system isn’t broken now qualifies as a fringe view.
This distrust carries over to every major institution in American public life.
According to the Pew Research Center, trust in institutions from banks to churches to public schools has fallen by half over the past half-century.
A new survey by Florida State University’s Institute for Governance and Civics finds low trust in K-12 schools, especially among Republicans. Members of both major political parties are united in the belief that schools are biased against their preferred views. Democrats are especially concerned about conservative bias, Republicans about liberal bias.
This widespread breakdown in trust may help explain the rise of new education alternatives. People are turning against institutions. But they still trust individuals. That includes individual teachers. For some parents, it might also include an education advisor who gets to know their child and helps them navigate their educational journey.
It makes sense, then, that microschools are the learning option gaining the most popularity in this annual parent survey by the National School Choice Awareness Foundation.
Rather than gamble on a relationship with a faceless institution, families may be seeking small learning environments run by individual teachers they can get to know and trust.
In Brief
Public schools added 121,000 employees last year, even as enrollment shrunk by 110,000 students. Fiscal pain could be in store as one-time pandemic relief funding expires.
Texas lawmakers propose setting aside up to $1 billion for a proposed education savings account program. The debate over whether to create a new scholarship program is over, say supporters. The questions now are focused on getting the technical details right.
In West Virginia, all students attending public schools will be eligible to switch to ESAs this year. The growth could push the potential price tag to $100 million in state that typically spends more than $2 billion a year on K-12 education.
A new study finds students with past child welfare reports (meaning their parents were suspected of abuse or neglect) are more likely to enroll in district schools than to take advantage of other school choice options, even if students with other disadvantages are just as likely to do so.
Divisive topics remain a fixture of many high school curricula.
Los Angeles schools come to grips with devastation in the wake of wildfires.