Pessimistic Parents and Cell Phone Bans: 2024 Midyear Polling Review

Now that we’re halfway into 2024, six months of polls on K–12 education make one thing clear: parents and Americans think school is off to a rocky start this year.

Pessimism about the direction of education is at the highest level in four years. Cell phone bans and bullying are on the rise. Meanwhile, unsatisfied school parents are searching for alternatives through school choice programs and microschooling. We cover a lot of ground in hundreds of pages of polling, so here we’ve narrowed it down to a few highlights that stood out the most so far this year.

EdChoice surveys American adults and current school parents every month, covering topics from school safety to the purpose of education. Conducted in partnership with Morning Consult, our polling captures the views of nationally representative samples of approximately 2,200 American adults and 1,200 school parents each month. We also administer semi-annual national surveys of teenagers and teachers. Our most recent survey of adults and parents was in the field June 5-7, 2024. Read the full report here.

Here are six key takeaways from the first half of 2024:

1. This year, Americans and school parents are the most pessimistic they’ve been about the state of K–12 education since we started our monthly polling.

Each month since January 2020, we’ve asked our respondents if they think that things in the American education system are heading in the right direction or if things have gotten off on the wrong track. Opinion hit rock bottom in February, when public optimism towards K–12 education fell to the lowest point in four years. Only a third of Americans (33%) thought that things were going in the right direction in their local school district, and only 22% were positive about education at the national level. School parents, while perennially more optimistic about schools than the general public, also felt the February blues. Less than half of parents (49%) said that things were on the right track in their local schools, and 32% were optimistic about education nationwide. The last time numbers were that low, schools were contending with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, public opinion on the direction of education has not rebounded much. A little over a third of Americans (35%) feel good about the direction of their local schools, while positive feelings towards nationwide education remain at a chilly 22%. School parents are similarly unchanged in their views. Just over half of parents (55%) think that things are going well at the local level, and 33% are positive about education at the national level.

2. Most school parents want cell phones in schools—teachers disagree.

The first half of 2024 has been inundated with calls to ban cell phones in schools. For example, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling new book “The Anxious Generation” has made waves arguing that smart phones are causing a youth mental health crisis and urging us to keep phones out of schools. Some states—such as Ohio, Florida, and Indiana—have started to crack down on cell phones at school.

But as of March 2024, 71% of school parents feel that students should be able to have cell phones in school, and 38% support kids having cell phones in the classroom. Teens are even more supportive of cell phones at school (91%) and in class (65%). In contrast, about half of teachers (56%) think students should have cell phones in school, and only 17% of teachers want cell phones in the classroom. At this rate, it seems like these new school cell phone bans might be a divisive policy between teachers and parents.

School parents also underrate their children’s social media compared to teachers. As of April 2024, 38% of school parents estimated that their children are on social media at least very often, two-thirds of teachers (67%) said that their students use social media very often. The numbers are even higher among high school parents (53%) and teachers (87%).

Similarly, the majority of school parents think that social media access has had a positive impact on their child. They were most positive about social media’s influence on their child’s relationships with classmates and peers (64%), and they were least positive about the effect on their child’s physical health and academic performance (51%). Teens generally agree with parents on these measures. Once again, teachers disagree sharply. They report social media having a negative effect on their students across all aspects of their life. They’re most concerned about social media’s influence on students’ mental health (12%), physical health (14%), and self-confidence (14%).

3. Bullying is now the top reason that parents switch schools for their kids.

Another question we regularly track is why parents decide to switch their child’s school. For the past year, parents have shared the same top three difficulties at their child’s former school: excessive stress/anxiety, bullying, and academic needs not being met. All three of these circumstances were consistently cited by 20-30% of school parents—for example, in August 2023: 28% excessive stress, 26% bullying, and 26% academic needs not being met.

In our latest poll, bullying broke away from the pack to emerge as the leading reason for switching schools. In June, 36% of school parents cited bullying as a difficulty for their child at their former school. Meanwhile, excessive stress/anxiety and unmet academic needs both remained steady at their previous level of 28%. Whether this uptick represents an increase in bullying incidents or simply increased awareness from parents, it’s clear that making sure that school is a safe environment is top of mind for parents in 2024.

For comparison, we asked teens how well their school handles safety issues in our teens survey this March. Only a third of teens (33%) said that their school handles bullying well. They felt the most negatively about school responses to bullying compared to other safety issues like violent behaviors (35%), mental health (37%), and guns (48%).

4. Support for school choice policies remains high.

In 2024, school parents and the general public remain solidly supportive of school choice policies. About three-fourths of parents and two-thirds of Americans support education savings account (ESAs), school vouchers, charter schools, and open enrollment.

Since the beginning of the year, support for each of these types of school choice has increased slightly among both Americans and school parents. For example, support for ESAs increased from 67% to 71% among Americans, and from 74% to 78% among school parents. ESAs are consistently the most popular school choice policy and tend to have high support across different demographics including political leanings, age group, and income.

5. In 2024, parents are interested in nontraditional learning models.

Surprisingly, one of our most consistent findings is that a substantial portion of school parents are interested in having their child learn at home at least one day per week. In June, almost half of parents (46%) indicated a preference for at least some schooling at home. Notably, more than half (54%) said they would prefer their child to go to school completely outside of the home—the highest number since we started asking this question in 2021.

A number of school parents are also interested in exploring small learning environments with fewer than 25 students. This type of approach to education, commonly called microschooling, has been grabbing headlines this year. In May, 13% of school parents said that they have a child enrolled in a microschool, and 24% said that they would be interested in learning more about microschools. Parent interest in microschooling diminished slightly (20%) when we defined microschools more narrowly as nontraditional centers of learning for homeschool, private, and charter school students.

6. Student absenteeism remains high, and parents may not be fully aware of the problem.

This spring, a quarter of teens (25%) self-reported missing more than 10 days of school this year. But last month, only 13% of school parents said that their child missed over 10 days of school. Based on this discrepancy, it seems like kids are missing school more than parents think they are.

Adding to this grim picture, 40% of teachers said that their students were absent from class more frequently this spring than in the fall. Roughly half of teachers (45%) said that absenteeism remained about the same this semester, and only 14% of teachers said that student attendance is improving.

Visit the EdChoice Public Opinion Tracker site to access past reports, crosstabs, questionnaires, and our national and state dashboards. All are updated monthly. We also provide a more in-depth description of our research and survey methods.

Our K–12 education polls archive is updated on a rolling basis, roughly a few times each month. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if we are missing any surveys, or if there are accidental errors.