Since President Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, Fox News has talked about what is taught in schools more than 1,000 times. On average, there were 2.3 such 15-second sections per day. The network’s focus on schools before last year’s Virginia governor’s contest was credited with either capturing a popular sentiment that led to the election results (as framed by Fox’s supporters) or causing a stir that had the same effect. The poll showed that Virginia voters were suddenly much more concerned about education as the election approached – as Fox coverage increased. (It’s not really clear how important the issue was for the election of Governor Glenn Youngkin (R), but that is off-topic for this article.) Since then, the debate has changed. Last year, the focus was on the race. This year, thanks in large part to legislation passed in Florida that prohibits discussions of “sexuality” on cloudy terms, it concerned LGBTQ Americans (although the race is still emerging). Florida law was effective in drawing the attention of the governor of this state, Ron DeSadis (R), and the debate was met with reactions against the visibility of same-sex couples. However, for all the time and energy spent discussing these issues and for all the tons of elected officials responding to parental concerns in their districts or states, a new Ipsos poll on NPR reveals something interesting. Most parents believe that their children’s schools teach them what they should be. Subscribe to How To Read This Chart, a weekly data bulletin by Philip Bump We see many similar patterns in politics. People hate Congress, but they support their MP. People are worried about the increase in crime, but they do not see crime increasing in their neighborhoods. National conversations can create national expectations that do not match local experiences. And in terms of classroom education, we seem to see a somewhat similar gap. The NPR-Ipsos poll asked two questions that arise at this point. The first asked parents if they believed that schools taught different subjects in ways that matched their own personal values. So, for example, they were asked if the schools their children attended taught US history in a way that was in line with their own values. Most said they did. The poll also asked about other issues, such as race and racism, the effects of slavery and racism, and sexuality and gender identity. In any case, more parents said they believed these things were taught according to their own values than they said they were not. These are the purple and orange bars below, respectively. (In many cases, too, parents said they did not believe the lessons were taught at all, the gray bars.) Only in one case was a partisan subset of respondents more likely to say that a lesson was not taught in accordance with their personal values than , what it was: Republicans evaluating how sexuality was taught. This issue, sexuality, was one of two places where there was a statistically significant gap between the parties (indicated by a dashed line). The other was that Democrats were much less likely to say that schools teach patriotism in a way that is not in line with their values. But watch out for these graphs in the race. Democrats and Republicans alike have a common view on how they feel about the way these issues are taught, and both groups generally approve of the way it is done. It would be informative to know how the parents would have answered this question last year, when race was at the heart of this controversy. Would the prices be the same? Or would they look more like the question of sexuality now? In other words, to what extent does the national debate influence views on how sexuality is taught? Are Republicans more likely to say they are concerned about how it is taught because of what they see in their children’s curricula or because of what they hear in the conservative media? When the fight erupted last fall, a common claim was that it was not triggered by Fox News coverage but by parents watching what children were learning during home-pandemic education about the pandemic. But now they do not seem to be terribly worried about it. Last year’s political debate was often framed in terms of how much parents had a say in classroom teaching. Democrat Yangin, who was defeated in Virginia, has been repeatedly attacked (especially in the Conservative media) for saying that parents should not lead the curriculum. This has evolved since then, with concerns about what teachers teach extending to expressed concerns about what information is available to children in general. A school rash, facing parental pressure, has removed books from school libraries that are considered controversial – often those related to same-sex or racial relationships. That was the other interesting question posed by NPR and Ipsos. Most Americans believe that parents have the right reason for what is taught and what is in school libraries. Republicans are much more likely to say that parents have very little say than Democrats, but even among Republicans, more say that either parents have the right reason or much more about what happens in schools. This question also included a healthy “not sure” response rate, but note that less than 1 in 5 respondents in total said their parents had very little reason. Parents were also consistently more likely to say that schools teach even controversial subjects according to their own values than to say that schools do not teach. For politicians like DeSantis, it is worthwhile to respond to the noisy minority: national attention and influence at its core as it seeks re-election, if not more. But it is also helpful to remember that the voices of one party in a state do not necessarily reflect what the country as a whole wants to say.
