Navigating political tensions over schooling - Findings from the fall 2022 American

As one district leader wrote in the survey, “We have addressed the ‘whispers’ we hear about the issues to avoid hearing ‘screams.’” A superintendent of a suburban district we interviewed similarly commented, “I do a lot of very deep relationship building, beyond the boardroom and outside the formal structures of meetings in order to be accessible and help people see our policies and processes are. [...] “For the first time in my career, I’m just gonna hunker down and do what I can do here and continue to find ways to make it work in a poor policy environment.” -Urban superintendent in the Midwest Most districts aren’t modifying instructional content or services in reaction to political controversy Despite the heated nature of the political disagreements over the last two years, a majority of dist. [...] We constructed our measures of local political context by using the share of the votes that went to President Joe Biden versus former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election in the county in which the district is located (see Figure 8). [...] We calculated the difference in vote shares and then sorted districts into three quantiles based on this difference; blue districts are those in counties in which Biden received the greatest vote shares; red districts are those in counties in which Trump received the greatest vote shares; purple districts are those in the middle of the distribution in counties where Biden and Trump received simila. [...] 19 CENTER ON REINVENTING PUBLIC EDUCATION NAVIGATING POLITICAL TENSIONS OVER SCHOOLING: FINDINGS FROM THE FALL 2022 AMERICAN SCHOOL DISTRICT PANEL SURVEY About the American School District Panel The ASDP is a research partnership between the RAND Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education.