Why Most Teachers Won’t Be Talking About the Election in Their Classrooms
Most teachers don’t plan to address the 2024 presidential election in their classrooms, with many citing the possibility of parent complaints and disrespectful classroom discussions, according to a new nationally representative survey.
Fifty-eight percent of K-12 teachers answered “no” when asked if they planned to talk about the election in an EdWeek Research Center survey of 678 educators, including 423 teachers.
Of those respondents, 53 percent said they would avoid talking about the election because it “is entirely unrelated to the subject” they teach. But 22 percent said instruction about the election “could lead to parent complaints,” and 19 percent said they didn’t believe their “students can discuss this topic with one another in a respectful manner.”
Other teachers—10 percent of those who said they didn’t plan to address the election in their classrooms—said they were unsure how to address the topic with their students.
In the survey, administrators also shared concerns about their schools or districts hosting voter registration drives. A third of school and district leaders said their school or district doesn’t plan to host a drive even as they teach students who will be old enough to vote in the election. The U.S. Department of Education has encouraged schools to help students register to vote before they graduate, and some states require that schools provide eligible students with voter registration forms.
The EdWeek Research Center survey was administered from July 17 through July 26, in the midst of a series of history-making developments in the presidential race, which will likely be studied in future U.S. history and civics classes.
On July 13, just a few days before the survey began, a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. On July 21, President Joe Biden announced he would abandon his reelection campaign, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him and kickstarting her path to the Democratic nomination. In doing so, Biden became the first sitting president since 1968 to decline to run for reelection, and Harris became the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket. Harris would become the first woman to serve as president if she wins in November.
The survey also followed a jury’s decision in late May to convict Trump of 34 felony charges in a scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, making Trump the first former president to be convicted of a felony. In addition, the survey opened during the Republican National Convention, and just two days after Trump announced Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate. (Harris announced her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, as her running mate on Aug. 6, after the conclusion of the survey.)
Despite the unprecedented nature of the election, which could provide fodder for lessons about the electoral process, presidential history, political propaganda, and election misinformation, teachers are hesitant to talk about politics in class.
Social studies teachers told Education Week in July that deepening political divisions and even some state laws that prohibit teachers from talking about politics and other “divisive” issues in the classroom have made them wary of discussing the election even as they believe it would be worthwhile.
Where teachers find room to talk about politics
Of the teachers who said they would not address the election in the classroom, only 6 percent said they would avoid the topic because administrators or supervisors have told them to, and just 5 percent said their school or district has a policy or rule telling teachers not to talk about it.
That means the majority of teachers aren’t directly risking their jobs by talking about the election, as uncomfortable as it may be. And there are teachers who have found their own ways to talk about politics and the election without getting into political opinions or bias.
Kelly Cronin, a high school science teacher in Peabody, Mass., uses lessons on data science and research to help students learn how to identify trusted information sources.
“During a time like this, when we have historic moments and we have unprecedented events ... that can be very, very scary and uncertain for students, I love to empower them to seek out new sources or seek out journalists or seek out data,” Cronin said during an interview at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston in July. “I can at least get them to have a critical eye when they are viewing data and when they are viewing information.”
Some teachers take it a step further, using local issues and state laws to help guide discussions. Otto Zequeira, a high school journalism teacher in Miami, has had to be careful in discussing race and LGBTQ+ issues because of Florida laws restricting how teachers can address those topics.
“I have regular conversations with my students about the censorship in Florida,” Zequeira said in an interview at the AFT convention. “I am open with my students about when I have been censored. They are aware of what’s happening so that I am not silenced or I am silenced as [little] as possible. My students have told me themselves they very much appreciate that.”
Zequeira’s transparency has helped foster classroom discussions about current events and politics that don’t require him to impart his own views, he said.
Most administrators say their school or district won’t hold a voter registration drive this year
Administrators who said their school or district plans to hold a voter registration drive this school year appear to be well in the minority, according to the survey.
Slightly more than a third of school and district leaders who indicated they were aware of school or district plans—34 percent—said there were no plans for their district or school to hold or host a voter registration drive during the 2024-25 school year.
A third said their school or district does not plan to do so despite having some students who are old enough to vote, while another third said their school or district won’t hold or host a registration drive this school year because their students are too young to vote.
The size of the school district is a factor in whether a school system decides to host a registration drive. Fifty-one percent of respondents from districts with 10,000 students or more said their school or district will host a drive, while only 19 percent of respondents from districts with fewer than 2,500 students said they would host one.
Twenty-nine percent of administrators said they don’t know if their school or district plans to hold a registration drive.
Registration drives have been a common way for schools to get students involved in the democratic process, but educators said they worried about how the registration drives could be perceived.
When asked why their school or district isn’t hosting a registration drive, respondents shared a range of reasons, from not wanting their school to come off as a political organization to having a large population of undocumented immigrant students. Twenty percent of those respondents said they do not host drives because involvement in politics isn’t a school district’s role and that holding one could lead to controversy or division.
“We do not want even the appearance of being, in any way, political,” one respondent wrote.
Others, in an open-ended response section of the survey, wrote that their schools had faced backlash in the past.
“The HS government teacher talks about registering to vote, but in the past, some teachers were accused of telling students how to vote,” a respondent said. “The backlash was too much for what it was worth and the superintendent at the time told the staff not to talk about politics or anything concerning [candidates’] policies.”
Twenty percent of respondents said their schools teach about voting and encourage voter registration instead of hosting registration drives. Sixteen percent said students can easily register on their own or that their communities host registration drives that students can access. Twelve percent of respondents who said their districts won’t hold drives said their districts have never had a registration drive, thought about it, or discussed it.
Others said it simply wasn’t worth the effort, with nearly a quarter of the respondents whose districts weren’t hosting registration drives saying that very few of their students are old enough.
“We have less than 1 percent of our student body who could vote,” one respondent said. “The resources needed do not validate that pathway.”