Accelerating Student Academic Recovery
Category: Student Learning
Post COVID, is education losing its special status as a policy domain more insulated from partisan politics than other policy areas? Indeed, a community’s political makeup influenced its’ schools’ pandemic learning modality, but did it predict other aspects of educational operations? We study the role of Republican vote share, race, markets, and public health in predicting a range of operations—from modality to family engagement to social-emotional support to teacher professional development—in Virginia. Vote share and racial composition were similarly predictive of initial in-person offerings but vote share was less predictive over time, and school operational decisions were less politicized than modality. Findings provide optimism for leaders seeking to avoid highly polarized dynamics, especially on issues that have not become nationalized.
Keywords
Education policy, politics of education, COVID-19 pandemic, learning modality
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/7nhg-d720
