Do Americans hold a consistent set of opinions about their public schools and how to improve them? From 2013 to 2018, over 5,000 unique respondents participated in more than one consecutive iteration of the annual, nationally representative Education Next poll, offering an opportunity to examine individual-level attitude stability on education policy issues over a six-year period. The proportion of participants who provide the same response to the same question over multiple consecutive years greatly exceeds the amount expected to occur by chance alone. We also find that teachers offer more consistent responses than their non-teaching peers. By contrast, we do not observe similar differences in attitude stability between parents of school-age children and their counterparts without children.
Public Opinion, Attitude Stability, and Education Policy
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/22r0-dx35
EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:
Houston, David M., Michael B. Henderson, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West. (). Public Opinion, Attitude Stability, and Education Policy. (EdWorkingPaper:
-435). Retrieved from
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