2018 Schooling in America Survey

This annual survey—developed and reported by EdChoice and interviews conducted by our partner, Braun Research, Inc.—measures public opinion and awareness on a range of K–12 education topics, including parents’ schooling preferences, educational choice policies, the federal government’s role in education and more. The survey includes an additional sample of current public school teachers to gauge whom they trust and how they feel about their profession, accountability, standardized testing and more.

Key findings:

• Teachers are not satisfied with their jobs, and they trust parents less than students and principals.

  Nearly three-fourths of teachers in our survey were non-Promoters, meaning they would not recommend teaching in a public school to a friend or colleague. While majorities of teachers trust their students and principals, they are less inclined to trust their students’ parents and public officials or government agencies.

• Parents are doing more to help their kids, but they’re still not accessing the schooling types they’d prefer.

  Compared to two years ago, parents appear to be sacrificing more to accommodate and support their children’s’ education, including taking an additional job, changing jobs, moving closer to a child’s school or taking out a loan to support a child’s education. On average, majorities of parents express satisfaction with their own schooling experiences, but huge gaps exist between parents’ schooling preferences for their children and actual school type enrollment patterns. 

• There’s a lot of confusion about K-12 accountability—who should design the system, who should administer it, what it should measure and who should be held accountable.

  Public school teachers, parents and the general public all want accountability to be as local as possible, with agreement that ensuring minimum standards in reading and math and identifying schools for assistance should be the broad purposes of a state accountability system. There is, however, no consensus on who should be held most responsible nor what is most important for evaluation. Also noteworthy: Surprising numbers of public school teachers and parents were unsure if their state uses grades or ratings for accountability purposes.