In Data Driven Covid Response, Opinions Still Matter

While we continue to track important data points across the country to assess the safety of returning to classrooms, and while we try to measure the impact of the pandemic based on standards attainment, there is some encouraging news… and it’s all based on opinion.

A post last week from The Brookings Institution almost-everyone-is-concerned-about-k-12-students-academic-progress/ reminds us that public opinion, whether based in fact or not, is a powerful driver of government policy. And the encouraging news is that we’re almost universally concerned with the impact of the pandemic on children’s education.

Almost three-fourths (71%) of US adults are concerned about K-12 students’ academic progress. This is an astounding degree of agreement, and suggests that policies and programs designed to address the impact of the pandemic on schools would have great support.

And equally encouraging is that these numbers are nearly equal across party lines, and that there is overwhelming support among older, wealthier, voters for programs to address the covid impact on disadvantages students.

This is in contrast to opinions from 2019, when there was a much more significant difference of opinion between parties. This should be encouraging news for K12 leaders planning new initiatives to address learning loss in the coming months.

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