I saw a headline about Americans’ preferences regarding in-person versus remote schooling. I was initially pretty stunned by the headline numbers and now, after looking at the actual poll results, I’m just deeply confused. (Also, none of this matters because who cares what randoms think. But I still find it interesting.)
Here’s the headline:
Poll: Americans value “health and safety” over in-person learning
And this is the specific claim that was surprising to me:
More than half of Americans say that it’s more important to protect the health and safety of teachers and students by moving to remote learning to avoid COVID exposure than to keep schools open for in-person learning, according to a new Harris Poll provided exclusively to Axios.
I’m stunned at the idea that more than half the people in the US think that schools should move to remote learning right now. I’d actually be a little surprised if substantially more than half of the people here thought that, and this group is obviously more COVID-cautious than the general public.
So I dug around to try to find the actual poll questions, and the results are kind of all over the map.
Pg. 34: Which of the following do you believe is most important to continue into 2022?
- 62%: Protecting public health and reducing case numbers to as low as possible as to prevent hospitalization and deaths.
- 38%: Avoiding further disruptions to the U.S. economy, even if that means some level of risk within workplaces, schools, and public life.
So this puts a majority of respondents in the category of reducing the effect fo COVID. I’d argue with the “reducting case numbers to as low as possible” part of it, but I’m probably closer in sentiment to the first option than to the second.
But that isn’t very informative about people’s views on schools specifically. Pg. 45 asked “Which of the following do you think is more important when it comes to schools during the COVID-19 pandemic?”
- 56%: Protecting the health and safety of teachers and students by moving to remote learning to avoid exposure to COVID-19.
- 44%: Having schools in-person to avoid further interrupting students’ education, even if it means possible exposure to COVID-19.
This seems pretty consistent with the first question, in that a majority seems to prefer moving to remote school. And I assume this is the basis for the claim in the Axios headline.
But when the questions get more specific, things flip.
When asked “Which of the following comes closest to your point of view regarding how schools should respond to the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic?” (p. 47), you get:
- 41%: Should be remote until the current surge of COVID-19 cases subsides.
- 30%: Only switch to remote learning if they do not have an adequate number of staff.
- 29%: Figure out how to hold in-person classes regardless of staff and student exposure risk.
I interpret these results as saying that a majority of people (30% plus 29%) do not want to pro-actively move students to remote learning.
When asked “If there is another surge of cases in the future [ed. note: if?], what do you think are the most important priorities for society in containing the spread?”, people were given the following options (P. 35-42):
- Enforcing mask mandates and expanding testing, but otherwise keeping everything open (top choice for 47%)
- Shutting down major events like sporting events and concerts (top choice for 23%)
- Moving schools to remote learning (top choice for 18%)
- Closing bars, restaurants, gyms, and other public venues (top choice for 12%)
The linked poll results have breakdowns by male/female, age group, political party, and vaccination status. But I don’t think they actually have a breakdown between parents with school-aged children and non-parents - that’s the split I was most interested in seeing, and the Axios story says that 62% parents with <18 year old kids chose health and safety over in-person learning. That’s higher than the overall number, which was suprising to me.
Again, none of this really matters, but it seems like when presented with the general question of “Do you want people to be safe?”, respondents answer “Yes, of course”. But when people are asked directly if they think schools should be remote right now, the majority says “No”. So I really don’t know what the average person is actually thinking.
