Skip to main content

NEPC Review: Our Next Assignment: Where Americans Stand on Public K-12 Education (Public Agenda , November 2018)

Public Agenda compiled public opinion surveys to show where the American public stands on education issues. Their report notes the importance of gauging current public understanding of education in the nation, particularly given the three major policy changes in the past 10 years: Race to the Top, the Common Core State Standards, and the Every Student Succeeds Act. While this publication makes a unique contribution in its gathering of many surveys into a single report and its inclusion of interviews with employers, the lack of clarity in its methods makes many of its conclusions questionable. The report is inconsistent in how it addresses disaggregated data and respondents from different demographic groups (e.g., race, class, political affiliation), resulting in an inability to generalize to the population or to any subgroup. Therefore, the conclusions are cursory and incomplete, requiring further study and research. 

Document Reviewed:

Our Next Assignment: Where Americans Stand on Public K-12 Education

Rebecca Silliman and David Schleifer
Public Agenda