Opinion polling and the measurement of Americans’ attitudes regarding education*     

Chase M. Billingham  Shelley McDonough Kimelberg 《教育政策杂志》2013,28(5):526-548

Abstract

The meaning, measurement, and implications of ‘public opinion’ have long been a source of debate. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the educational priorities of elites in the US reflect the educational priorities of the American public. To do so, we focus on one particular segment of the education policy-making elite – education poll creators. Through a content analysis of questions asked between 1969 and 2013 in the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools, we examine the salience of key educational issues over time. We compare these trends to the proportion of poll respondents who label those issues the ‘biggest problem’ facing schools, thereby approximating two different conceptions of public opinion regarding education. We find that the issues that receive the most coverage by pollsters do not typically match the issues that respondents claim to be the biggest problems in schools. In light of the important role that opinion polls may play in shaping discussion and debate over educational issues, we argue that further study of the construction of public opinion is warranted.  相似文献   

Seeking a ‘critical mass’: middle-class parents’ collective engagement in city public schooling     

Linn Posey-Maddox  Shelley McDonough Kimelberg  Maia Cucchiara 《British Journal of Sociology of Education》2016,37(7):905-927

A growing body of literature has begun to explore the individual identities, motivations, and school choices of middle-class, typically white, parents who choose to reside in socioeconomically and racially mixed central city neighborhoods. Drawing on qualitative research in three US cities, we argue that a focus on middle-class parents’ collective engagement in schooling is particularly important in under-resourced urban contexts. In these environments, we show, middle-class parents’ use of social networks often extends beyond basic information-sharing about school quality to encompass a range of activities undertaken with other families ‘like them’ who have also chosen to enroll their children in an urban public school. We find that, in some instances, middle-class parents’ collective actions can benefit an entire class or school. Yet in other instances, their activation of social capital can contribute to processes of social reproduction in urban schooling by excluding or marginalizing low-income students and their families.  相似文献   

亲爱的木木，我们开始认真了     

Lennon．L．Luo 《中学生博览》2012,(11):20-21

春天总是过得异常快，刚下过几场雨。就已经快三月了。雨还在吧嗒吧嗒地下着，不过再也不用叫醒木木了。毕竟快高考了，谁还会再在课堂上睡觉呢？木木，也许再陪你听过几场雨，就会到那个绵长绵长的六月了吧？  相似文献