How Critical Events Rather than Performance Trends Shape Public Evaluations of the Schools.

Abstract

This paper argues that critical events rather than performance trends affect the collective evaluation of public education because critical events are more likely to stimulate competition among political activists over the meaning attached to real-world happenings. This means, for example, that students' test score averages are not the proximate cause of public evaluations of public schools, but referenda, political interventions, or school shootings may be decisive, simply because such events provoke contests over meaning into which many attentive citizens are drawn. Moreover, racial differences in the assessment of public schools are more likely to result from critical events than from performance trends because racial spokespersons are more vigilant and outspoken in periods of dramatic encounter than in the face of everyday frustrations or pleasures. Public opinion surveys of Nashville–Davidson County, Tennessee, demonstrate episodic diminutions of public esteem for public schools attached to critical events, but not to performance trends. The Nashville case shows that political interventions by social movements or political elites seem especially likely to cause serious declines in the rating given the schools by the general public.