Right-wingers' real beef with public schools, though they themselves don't even realize it, is that they're doing too good a job compared to what wingnuts want. A large majority of contemporary public school graduates just plain know better than to be right-wing conservatives. And they especially know better than to be Trumpers.
Who would have imagined that after the past two tumultuous years, when so much was written and said about how the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had convinced American parents that public schools were “failing” institutions, that as the 2022-2023 school year begins, “Americans’ ratings of their community’s public schools reached a new high dating back 48 years.” That’s the stunning finding in the highly respected annual survey conducted by PDK.
The finding aligns with a history of survey results showing parents are generally pleased with the public schools their children attend. Even during the height of the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, Gallup reported that parent satisfaction with local schools declined only slightly, and “more than seven in 10 parents” still expressed satisfaction.
Puzzling over this phenomenon, Chalkbeat national reporter Matt Barnum judged the widespread assumption of parent dissatisfaction with local public schools to be one among a number of “common, fear-inducing claims about the state of American schooling [that] are inaccurate or unproven.” He concluded, “It’s not entirely clear what’s going on.”
In an attempt to explain what’s going on, education historian Jack Schneider noted that while most parents rate the schools their own children attend highly, with 70 percent assigning their schools a grade of A or B, a similar percentage grade schools in general C or D.
In considering what might be causing this “perception gap,” Schnider argued, “One obvious factor is the rise of a national politics of education.” - LA Progressive
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