Republicans’ Confidence In Public Schools Drops To Record Low
Republican citizens confidence in the public school system has dropped to record lows, as more and more people leave public schools.
Americans’ confidence in the public school system is shaky. It has been recently learned that education has become such a political issue that parents are willing to change how they vote solely based on school policies and politics entering the classroom. Now, a recent Gallup poll has found that republicans’ confidence in public schools has dropped to a record low.
Oval confidence in the public school system has dropped significantly. In 2020, 41% of Americans had a lot of confidence in the education system. That dropped to 32% in 2021, and has fallen to only 28% this year.
While that average reflects an overall decline, political affiliation does have some bearing on these outcomes. Since the 1970s confidence in the public school system has gradually followed a downward trend — barring a few brief spikes. Although both democrats and republicans held strong confidence in the education system at the start of the 70s, over time republican confidence has plummeted to the point that only 14% of this group of Americans now believe that children are being properly educated by public schools. This comes after a spike in 2020, when all Americans seemed to rally behind teachers and support institutes of learning.
Despite the uptick in trust during the pandemic, over time many families grew frustrated with school boards and teachers’ unions as these powerful organizations lobbied to keep schools closed and mask children well after it was learned that COVID-19 barely affected kids and was not as harmful to the general population as predicted. Since then support for public schools has fallen and the general population has lost confidence in the education system. This is not the only area of interest concerning people in the country.
American confidence in United States institutions is also down. According to another Gallup poll, trust in 15 of the 16 US institutions listed has fallen between 2021 and 2022 alone. Confidence in organized labor is the only unaffected category, with small businesses experiencing the lowest drop of 2%. The highest drop in confidence is being felt by the presidency itself which has lost 15% of Americans’ trust. Now only 23% of the country has confidence in the president and his position. Being that so many people are losing faith in such a large number of American institutions, it’s no wonder that public schools are losing support.
Republicans are especially concerned with the direction the nation is taking. They have made waves within public schools, challenging popular trends and the insertion of politics into children’s lessons. During the pandemic, republicans experienced the largest drop in trust for school principals, although, again all political affiliations also expressed a drop in confidence that school principals were working to put students’ best interests first.
Public schools are experiencing unprecedented challenges, but many parents believe this is a result of their own making. Instead of working with parents and communities, school districts across the nation have displayed that they are committed to furthering their own agendas and that of the Department of Education regardless of what taxpayers think. Taxpayers fund these institutions and after being ignored throughout tumultuous times, confidence in the education system has waned, leading to mass enrollment drops, teacher shortages, and movements which even wish to defund teachers’ unions and the schools they control.
