Higher Education and Student Protests: How K–12 Parents View Campus Activism

With the end of the 2023-24 school year, families across the United States are reflecting on the last year of academic experiences. Many parents and schools are reexamining priorities, arguably as open to non-traditional solutions as they ever have been. K–12 education continues to be a major policy reform focus in state legislatures across the nation, and higher education institutions have become a focal point for weighing foreign policy.

With this backdrop, EdChoice once again surveyed a nationally representative sample of American adults 18 and older (N=2,252). Conducted in partnership with Morning Consult, this survey was in the field from May 7-10, 2024. With additional sampling, we obtained responses from 1,294 parents of children currently in K–12 education.

We asked a variety of questions about the state of K–12 education. Here are three highlights I find telling about how people view the 2023-24 academic year:

K–12 Parents and College Protests

In the world of higher education, a major story of the 2023-24 year has been widespread student protests. Given the provocative nature of some of these protests, as well as some responses to them, we wanted to ask K–12 parents whether these campus events affected their perception of higher education institutions.

To get a fuller picture of parents’ perspectives here, we asked parents two similar but distinct questions about the protests. The first asked parents to think about any relationship between the protests and what they hoped their child would do after completing their K–12 education. The second question asked whether the protests had changed parents’ perspectives on higher education.

No one answer dominated the question about post-high school plans. At 39%, parents were most likely to say that the protests had not affected their long-term desires for their children, though 30% said their opinions had changed. Eighteen percent of parents were somewhere in between, and another 13% said they weren’t sure.

Parents appeared somewhat less opinionated when thinking about their opinion of higher education. About one out of five parents said they now thought better of higher education (21%), while a quarter of them thought worse of it (27%). A third of parents said their opinion had not changed (35%), and another 7% said they weren’t aware of the campus protests at all.

Parents want their schools to have advanced class options

We asked parents how important it was for their children’s schools to offer advanced academic classes. Just under two-thirds (64%) of all school parents stated that it is “extremely” or “very” important for their schools to have advanced classes. Another 25% said that advanced classes where “somewhat important” for their children’s schools to offer, which means very few parents (7%) thought advanced classes were unimportant. Parents with children in private schools are more likely than district school parents to consider advanced classes at least “very” important for their children’s schools (78% vs 65%, respectively).

It’s one thing to say advanced classes are important, but it’s another thing to make schooling decisions based on them. With that in mind, we also asked parents whether their educational decisions would change if their children’s schools hypothetically stopped offering academically advanced classes. Results were fairly evenly spread. A third of parents (34%) indicated that they would be “extremely” or “somewhat” likely to look for a different school option if their children’s schools stopped offering advanced classes. Another 19% said they would be “somewhat likely” to consider a different school, and 37% responded that they would be unlikely to seek a switch. Once again, private school parents were more likely than district school parents to consider a potential change.

For some perspective, just under half (45%) of school parents said they had at least one child taking a gifted, advanced, or honors class at school. For private school parents, this rate was 63%.

ESA Support is as Consistent as It Gets

For the second consecutive year, a wave of states has passed expansive education savings account programs (ESAs). ESAs have never seen more public attention than they have now, both positive and negative. Despite any turbulence that can arise from political cycles, ESA support among the general public continues to rest around 70%, with parent support sitting even higher (75%).

These are roughly the same levels we saw when we began conducting monthly polling in 2020. The consistency is even more impressive when you take out the “don’t know” responses and just compare favor to disfavor: Americans are six times more likely to voice support for ESAs than opposition.

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.