New research shows that Americans’ perception of quality teachers is generally more meaningful than whether they’re wearing red or blue.
A recent nationally representative survey study, with funding in part granted by the Institute of Social Science Research at ASU to professor Gustavo Fischman, sought to cut through the noise of endless partisan culture wars to find the answer to one question: Do Americans of different political persuasions have incommensurate ideas of what makes a good teacher?
In two previous studies, study authors had refined a common definition of what makes a good teacher. A 2020 survey study found that “Respondents generally focused on highlighting the same seven out of 10 statements, giving us a vision of how they perceived a very good teacher. People prioritized the same factors – how much the teachers cared about their students and whether they supported them – regardless of their age, race, gender or political affiliation.”
Yet, partisan chatter in the news and online might lead one to believe that Republicans and Democrats have completely different values when it comes to teaching. Study authors began to wonder if many Americans changed their opinions about quality teachers once they began to weigh their own political perspective (and the political affiliation of the teacher) within the balance.
Using a nationally representative survey sample of 1,562 adults from a range of political backgrounds, researchers gave respondents the simple (previously refined) definition of a good teacher. When respondents answered blindly, without receiving any political labels attached to the definition, 85 percent of Democrats, Republicans and independents agreed with the description of a very good teacher.
That changed once politics came to the forefront. If researchers indicated that a respondent’s opposing political party (the party that they did not politically identify with) endorsed a particular description of a very good teacher, respondents became less likely to support the statement.
Seemingly through political animosity alone, disagreement on the definition of a quality teacher increased. Researchers noted: “The effect was sharpest among Republicans: Support fell from 85% to 64% when the description was tied to Democrats. Democrats’ agreement slipped less, from 86% to 76%, when the description was tied to Republicans.”
All hope is not lost. Even though some respondents became tangled up in their partisan preferences, nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Democrats still agreed on the qualities of a good teacher.
It’s natural for people to inherently disagree with positions held by their social or political rivals. But the ‘better angels of our nature’ would ask us to set aside animosity and search for truth and brotherhood.
A quality school system, as we have written here before many times, should be a bipartisan priority of our society. A national two-thirds agreement on the qualities of a good teacher is a good place to start building a larger social coalition that works towards student-first, excellence-oriented systems.
