A new Phi Delta Kappa survey finds no consensus among Americans on the basic role of the nation’s public schools, with fewer than half saying academic achievement should be emphasized over work skills or preparation for citizenship.

Delving into a wide range of key issues in public education, the poll is the 48th annual survey by PDK. Formerly the PDK/Gallup poll, the survey now is produced for the international association of professional educators by Langer Research Associates.

Among other results:

• When given a direct choice, 68 percent of Americans say it’s better for their local public schools to have more career-technical or skills-based classes than more honors or advanced academic classes.
• By an even bigger majority, the public says that when a public school is failing, the best approach is to replace its teachers and staff while keeping the school itself open.
• School ratings are linked closely with the extent to which parents feel their school communicates with them effectively and is open to their input – useful guidance for administrators seeking to improve their schools’ standing with the public.

PDK is presenting the survey today at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and full results are available at the PDK Poll website.

The survey been covered by outlets such as The Washington Post, Education Week, Education World, U.S. News & World Report, Quartz, the Detroit Free Press and the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

We’ve followed the main analysis of our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll with four additional pieces on key elements of the 2016 presidential election. One looks at the role of Donald Trump’s perceived qualifications and honesty in his support; others look at young adults, white Catholics and whites by gender and education – particularly, college educated white women vs. non-college white men – as crucial voting groups.

Following the party conventions, our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds Hillary Clinton consolidating her support, with an 8-point lead over Donald Trump in the general election horserace. It’s received significant attention, netting more than 30,000 shares on ABCNews.com and coverage from many outlets, including CNN, CBS News, TIME, Politico,The Huffington Post, USA Today, the New York Daily News, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, FiveThirtyEight, CNBC, the New York Post, Vox, Slate, The Hill, The Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Indian Express, the Daily Mail, Salon, New York Magazine, The Financial Times, Deutsche Welle, the Bangor Daily News, the Duluth News Tribune, The Michigan Daily, The Standard (Hong Kong) and the Toronto Star.

Our pre-convention ABC News/Washington Post poll, focused on the presidential election and, separately, race relations, has received widespread pickup, including in Politico, The Boston Globe, CBS News, Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, Bloomberg Politics, The Washington Times, the Daily Mail, the New York Daily News, Voice of America, The Hill, The Sacramento Bee, the Daily Comet (Louisiana), The New Indian Express, OneIndia and Newsweek Pakistan – as well as, of course, ABC and the Post.

Our newest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that most Americans disapprove of the FBI’s recommendation not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email practices while secretary of state. Our analysis has received more than 15,000 shares and 4,000 comments on ABCNews.com. Beyond ABC and the Post, media coverage includes CNN, Fox News, Politico, Time, the Huffington Post, the Daily Mail, the Washington Times, the New York Post, UPI, the Denver Post, The Columbus Dispatch, Newsday, The Fresno Bee and many local newspapers and broadcast outlets.

Our newest ABC News/Washington Post poll, covering the 2016 election, guns and terrorism issues and the threat of the Zika virus, has received significant attention from the public as well as wide pickup in the press. In particular, our latest analysis of the general election horserace, finding a 12-point lead for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, garnered over 12,000 shares and 6,000 comments on ABCNews.com. Other press coverage included The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, Politico, USA Today,Bloomberg, PBS NewsHour, the Huffington Post, MSNBC, The Hill, Fortune, New York Magazine, the Boston Herald, Salon, Slate, Quartz, Voice of America, the Hindustan Times, the Times of India, The Straits Times (Singapore) and the NM Political Report (New Mexico), among many others.

Our most recent favorability poll for ABC News/Washington Post – finding near-record high unfavorable ratings for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – was covered widely by a variety of outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Politico, NBC, NPR, the Huffington Post,Bloomberg, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, National Review, Slate, The Hill, the New York Review of Books, Salon, Al-Monitor, the Sioux City Journal, the Press-Enterprise of Southern California, the Columbia Daily Tribune (Missouri) and the Albany Herald (Georgia), in addition to ABCand the Post.

Public Opinion Quarterly, the top peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, has published a new article by our Senior Research Analyst Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, “Should Researchers Abandon Questions about ‘Democracy’? Evidence from Latin America.” Available via advance access online, the article shows that standard questions on “democracy” lead Latin Americans to overstate their actual commitment to the concept by focusing on abstractions rather than practice. Nonetheless, Kiewiet de Jonge shows that these often-used “democracy” questions remain useful for understanding how individuals come to support democratic governments.

Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll on the 2016 presidential race has received wide coverage across the country and internationally. Beyond ABC and the Post, we’ve seen mention of the poll in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, onNational Public Radio, in Politico, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, People magazine, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, Newsday, Bloomberg News,Fox News, CNBC, RushLimbaugh.com, Daily Kos, The Daily Beast, Slate, The Hill, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, The New York Post, theToledo Blade, Commentary magazine, the Independent (U.K.), the Daily Mail (U.K.), The Guardian (U.K.), the Japan Times, Canada Journal, theSydney Morning Herald, the Gulf News (U.A.E.), the Times of India, the Straits Times (Singapore), the Russian news outletRT.com, the Herald News (Zimbabwe) and scores of other outlets, including local TV and radio stations, newspapers and news websites.

The range of our work at Langer Research Associates was on display at the past week’s annual meetings of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the World Association for Public Opinion Research in Austin, Texas, where we presented five papers and two posters and demonstrated PARC™, our knowledge management software application for survey research professionals.

Joined by our research partners at ESPN Consumer Insights, we presented “The New Living Room: How Americans View their Video,” an in-depth study of changing video consumption habits. In another joint presentation, with our colleagues at the National Sleep Foundation, we reported on the Foundation’s new Sleep Health Index, a robust and accessible tool for tracking the public’s sleep health.

We were joined by our partners at Counterpart International and D3 Systems Inc. in summarizing a detailed report on the effectiveness of a USAID-funded community development program in Bangladesh. And Gary Langer and Senior Research Analyst Chad Kiewiet de Jonge co-presented our analysis of the 2016 presidential election for ABC News, including a summary of Republican and Democratic primary exit poll results and our evaluation of the attitudinal roots of support for Donald Trump.

We presented an evaluation of public attitudes on climate change and their potential role in the 2016 election. Research Analyst Margaret Tyson contributed a poster on our test of the accuracy of gender coding by telephone interviewers. And we presented a poster describing PARC, the Polling Archive, our cloud-based software application that seamlessly stores, searches and retrieves essential survey materials.

A record of nearly 1,200 researchers attended this year’s AAPOR conference, held jointly this year with WAPOR. We were honored to participate, to learn from our colleagues and to share these examples of our own work.