The New Politics of Education and the Pursuit of a Diverse Democracy - January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

The study examines how increasingly partisan pressures in education threaten public schools’ efforts to educate toward a diverse democracy. Using summer 2022 survey data from a large, nationally representative sample of high school principals, the analysis identifies when and where parent and community pushback emerges. Findings show higher likelihood of pushback in purple contexts and reduced support in purple and red communities. The work maps the dynamics and guides future research and strategic action by stakeholders.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Partisan politics and education as a theater

Evidence from survey of high school principals

Effects on conflicts and supportive actions

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584241311819 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) The New Politics of Education and the Pursuit of a Diverse Democracy Joseph Kahne University of California, Riverside John Rogers Alexander Kwako University of California, Los Angeles The increasingly partisan politics of education make it vital to conceptualize why and to empirically assess how current partisan pressures threaten public schools’efforts to educate toward a diverse democracy. We examine these dynamics, drawing on a survey of a large and diverse sample of high school principals, weighted to reflect national demographics, conducted in summer 2022. We find that high schools in purple contexts are particularly likely to experience parent and community pushback related to education toward a diverse democracy and that schools in purple and red communities are less likely to provide support for this priority. By mapping this terrain, the study informs our understanding of the new partisan politics of education, priorities for future research, and, ultimately, directions for strategic action on the part of key stakeholders. Keywords: diversity, educational policy, leadership, politics, principals, structural equation modeling, survey research, politics of education, diversity, democracy, partisanship Introduction We went from having nobody at our board meetings to having 150 people pack in our board meetings during COVID because we were“killing their children” by requiring them to wear masks. . . . We’ve had an individual come to our school board with a gun on his belt that we’ve had to have removed. . . . There is a very vocal and politically organized group of parents/stakeholders with ultra-conservative views that wants to remove discussions about race from the highschool classroom, believe that LGBTQ+ rights should not be upheld in the school system, desire to have Christian prayer in schools, desire books related to race and LGBTQ+ topics tobe removed from the curriculum and library. . . . One of the big pushes is [from] a group called Protect Nebraska Children—they are actually funded by a group out of Arizona [Family Watch International] . —High school principal from a red community in Nebraska (Rogers et al., 2022)1 The politics of education have often been fierce. However, throughout most of American history, political conflicts in education have been structured by ethnicity, language, religion, or race and have not been organized around partisan identities (Tyack, 1974; for a recent review, see Houston, 2022) . Indeed, the hope for nonpartisan public schools that respond to the full range of constituent needs and thereby sustain broad public support goes back to their founding.“[Once] the schoolroom [becomes] a legitimate theater for party politics,” wrote Horace Mann, then “with what violence will hostile partisans struggle to gain possession of the stage?” Mann prophesied that if the “tempest of political strife [is] let loose upon our common schools, they would be overwhelmed with sudden ruin”(Mann, 1849, p. 86) . To a greater degree than in earlier eras, current debates regarding school policies and practices have indeed become a theater for party politics. Examining data from the past 15 years, Houston et al. (2022) found that party affiliation increasingly predicts an individual’s position on educational issues. Currently, partisan divisions are sizable when it comes to hot button topics such as teaching about race and racism (Collins, 2022; Houston et al., 2022), the availability of books in school libraries (Mumma, 2023), and school policies related to students’ gender and sexual identity (Polikoff et al., 2022) . Just as Mann predicted, growth in thes

FAQs

What is the main focus of the study on education politics?

The study focuses on why and how current partisan pressures threaten public schools’ efforts to educate toward a diverse democracy.

How is the empirical evidence collected and analyzed?

Empirical findings come from a survey of a large and diverse sample of high school principals, weighted to reflect national demographics, conducted in summer 2022.

What differences does the study find across community contexts?

High schools in purple contexts are particularly likely to face parent and community pushback related to educating toward a diverse democracy, while schools in purple and red communities are less likely to provide support for this priority.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious