By Katherine Bathgate, Senior Policy Advisor at State Policy Network

2020 has been a year unlike any other in recent education history. School closures amid the coronavirus hit parents hard as they scrambled to navigate options to ensure learning continued for their children. Some families were able to access online learning relatively quickly while others picked up paper packets for their children to complete at home. Other children received little-to-no instruction during this time. Now, parents are trying to figure out what the 2020-21 school year will look like and how to help their children learn under challenging conditions.

In June, SPN conducted a nationwide poll through Heart + Mind Strategies to learn what K-12 parents experienced in the spring, assess their thoughts for the upcoming school year, and explore what policies they would like to see put in place that would allow their children to receive a quality education going forward. Here are some of the key findings:

Spring results were mixed at best and parents shouldered the burden of distance learning:

• Over 40% of parents believe their children are now behind academically.

• 81% of parents say their children engaged in distance learning and about 50% of those parents said they had a good experience with distance learning.

• Parents report they spent on average 10.2 hours a week supporting their children’s education and spent about $200 on school supplies and materials during the school closures.

As parents think about the upcoming school year, many parents are considering change and/or are uncomfortable sending their children back to school:  

• Only 1/3 of parents polled said they were comfortable sending their children back to school under the current conditions.
  
• 58% of parents are considering changing their child’s education and 20% report they have already made a change.

• The most popular ideas for supporting students with health concern in the fall were increased access to resources like a stipend to support at-home learning or remote or distance learning options.

Support for school choice has grown:

• Homeschooling received an 11% bump in favorable attitudes from pre-pandemic support to now. 37% of parents say they are very or extremely likely to consider homeschooling this year.
• School choice favorability saw a 6% bump and 35% of parents say they would be very or extremely likely to use an Education Savings Account to change at least one of their children’s schools if their state had or enacted one.

Parents favor policy ideas that technology and empower families:

• The top policies parents support are requiring schools to provide distance learning for students who cannot return (67% support) and subsidizing digital devices to help students get online from home (63% support).
• 63% of parents say they would support an “emergency” or “pandemic” Education Savings Account to help families fund homeschool, online school, or tutors when it is unsafe for their children to return to school due to health reasons.

As states navigate another unprecedented school year, these results provide valuable insights on what parents expect and how they can ensure learning continues in a way that puts students and families first.

The findings from the poll are below. The nationwide poll was conducted June 16 – June 25, 2020 of 1,000 parents of school-aged children.

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