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Given the drumbeat of headlines about everything that seems to be going wrong in America, perhaps it’s an inconvenient time to point out how many things are starting to head in the right direction when it comes to American education. Yet that is exactly what we found in the second edition of The State of Educational Opportunity in America Survey.
Created through a partnership between 50CAN and Edge Research, the survey captures the views of more than 23,000 parents across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., building on the more than 20,000 parents surveyed in summer 2024. What we found is an education system that is being remade for the better by making available to more families the experiences traditionally reserved for the wealthiest among us.
That starts with schooling. Historically in America, the wealthy have taken advantage of the range of choices in schools that their resources have unlocked while most families had to make do with only one option. But with the huge expansion of school choice programs over the past few years, more working- and middle-class families are getting to take control of their child’s education and it shows: the percentage of parents who say they feel like they have a choice in what school their child attends is up five points from 65% to 70%.
In sync with this shift, we also found that the percentage of parents who say, if they had to do it over again, they would send their child to the school they go to today also rose, climbing four points from 64% to 68%. Finally, the percentage of parents reporting they are very satisfied with their child’s school rose two points, and the percentage reporting they are very satisfied with the emotional and mental health their child receives at school rose four points.
Another point of real progress since 2024 is in high school students’ participation in career pathways. Children of the well-off have traditionally had a leg up in this area but through leadership at the state and local level, more opportunities are being made available to more children of all walks of life.
Parents Want Tutoring, Summer Camp, Open Enrollment. Annual Testing? Not So Much
The number of families who say their child is participating in pathway programs climbed across the board: Participation in dual enrollment courses, CTE programs and industry certifications are all up three points while internships and apprenticeships jumped six points. At the same time, we found an increase in demand for these programs, ranging from two to five points, among those who do not currently have a child enrolled, suggesting demand for future growth on the horizon.
Tutoring represents a third area of promising growth. When the children of the wealthy fall behind, they have always known they can get their child the help they need to catch back up. Now that same resource is reaching more students regardless of income. Overall, the percentage of children who received tutoring in the past year increased five points from 19% to 24%. At the same time, the gap in tutoring between low-income children and high-income children decreased from 12 points to just eight points.
Will these trends continue? They will if parents have anything to say about it. We found that 86% of parents favored free tutoring for any K-12 student who falls behind, 80% favored free summer camp for all K-12 students, 77% favored open enrollment so any student can transfer to the public school of their choice and 77% also favored universal ESAs, where any parent can use a government savings account to pay for everything from tutoring to textbooks to tuition.
Now it’s up to education advocates and policymakers to look past the gloom in the daily headlines and recognize the opportunity this moment represents. We have emerged from the pandemic with a stronger sense of purpose around the ways education needs to change. We have seen those changes taking root in states around the country. And it is clear that parents of all political stripes want us to go further to make these initial steps a permanent part of the American educational landscape.
We have an opportunity to secure the policy wins this year that will get headlines for all the right reasons by focusing less on ideological battles and more on the practical changes that will improve students’ lives.
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