Schools are porous institutions—what
happens in society at large plays out in classrooms and hallways—so the
disturbing findings of a masterful new report “School and Society in the Age of
Trump” should not surprise. But they do, in their scope and severity. John
Rogers and his colleagues (Michael Ishimoto, Alexander Kwako, Anthony Berryman,
and Claudia Diera) at UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access
surveyed a representative sample of over 500 public high school principals from
across the country and found that 89% report that “incivility and
contentiousness in the broader political environment has considerably affected
their school community.” Eight-three percent of principals note these tensions
are fueled by “untrustworthy or disputed information,” and over 90% report
students sharing “hateful posts on social media.”
Almost all principals rate the
threat of gun violence as a major concern, and one in three principals report
that their school received in the previous year threats of mass shooting or
bombing or both. In schools with a sizable immigrant population, principals
report the significant negative effects that federal immigration policy and its
associated anti-immigrant rhetoric have on student performance and family
stability. And schools that are in the areas of the country hardest hit by the
opioid crisis are directly affected by addiction, overdose, and family devastation.
These extraordinary challenges
interact and are cumulative. Over 90% of principals report confronting at least
three of the problems I just listed: incivility, false information, threats of
gun violence, anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, and the opioid crisis. This
is the world of the American high school today.
Rogers and his colleagues provide a
rich analysis of the survey data and contextualize it with relevant research on
political climate, gun violence, etc. But what makes the report come poignantly
alive are the many comments offered by the principals themselves. There was
room on the original survey for written comments, and, as follow-up, forty
principals were selected to be interviewed. The reader gets a strong sense of
the pressures these challenges place on principals, the various ways they try
to respond, the political tensions many have to navigate in their communities,
their frustrations and their breakthroughs. The report concludes with
recommendations for school leaders that gain added weight from the lived
experiences of the many principals who speak directly to us.
“School and Society in the Age of
Trump” offers a compelling and thought-provoking composite portrait of the
American high school principal that becomes as well a portrait of our country
at the end of the second decade of the Twenty-first Century.
You can download both a summary and
the full report here.
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