Education and Democracy in the Age of Trump

• In Event: 77.017 - School Climate in the Age of Trump: Educators' Responses

Abstract

Reflecting on her experiences teaching in a Utah high school in spring 2017, Nicole Morris reported: “I’ve never been in a school year where I’ve had so many kids, kind of on edge” (Rogers et al., 2017). Morris was one of more than 1,500 teachers who participated in a study about how the political climate ushered in by the 2016 presidential election was shaping experiences of America’s high school students. The study found striking increases in student and teacher stress, rising incivility and racial hostility, and intensified battles about the validity of different sources of information. Like Morris, many teachers reported that the dramatic and rapid changes in the political environment left them and their students on edge.

This paper focuses on the culture and climate in America’s high schools in the second year of the Trump administration as a way to assess whether the dynamics highlighted in the 2017 report reflect a brief period of adjustment of students and schools to an historic moment of political change, or a more substantial and ongoing disruption. In considering this question, it is important to acknowledge that, long before the presidential election of 2016, many high school students experienced discrimination, bullying, and polarized discussions over the nature and meaning of truth (American Educational Research Association, 2013; Aroian, 2012; Hess & McAvoy, 2014; Umaña-Taylor, 2016; Yoshikawa et al., 2017). At issue now is whether there has been a quantitative and qualitative shift in the nature of these challenges as well as the degree to which they are explicitly linked to the national political environment.

To explore these questions, I draw on a survey and follow-up interviews with a nationally representative sample of public high school principals. As of the time of proposal submission, we are in the middle of our data collection. We expect to receive 600 survey responses and to conduct 30 follow-up interviews. The twenty-minute online survey asks principals about the extent to which challenges from the broader social and political environment—battles over “truth,” political incivility, the opioid crisis, threats to immigrant families, and threats of gun violence—manifested as problems within their schools. In addition, principals were asked about student voice and participation in civic activity at the school. The 30-45 minute video-chat interviews ask principals from geographically and demographically diverse schools to elaborate on these challenges as well as ways that their students exercised voice. Other survey questions (along with data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the U.S. Census and other sources) provide information on a variety of school characteristics.

The paper will draw on the surveys and interviews to examine the ways that the broader political environment is shaping climate and culture in America’s public high schools. I will report on aggregate trends as well as differences across geographic regions and between demographically distinct schools—in particular, schools enrolling predominantly students of color and those enrolling predominantly white students.

Author

• John S. Rogers, University of California - Los Angeles