The Politics of Re-Opening Schools: Explaining Public Preferences Reopening Schools and Public Compliance with Reopening Orders During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Author: Jonathan E Collins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221135521
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2023, Vol. 51(2) 223–234

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221135521

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The Politics of Re-Opening Schools: Explaining

Public Preferences Reopening Schools and

Public Compliance with Reopening Orders

During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Jonathan E Collins

1



Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the decision to reopen schools for in-person instruction has become a pressing policy issue.

This study examines what overall factors drive public support for schools re-opening in person and whether members of the

public are willing to comply with school re-opening decisions based on their own preferences and/or the level of government

from which the order comes. Through two rounds of national surveys with an embedded experiment, I f‌ind consistent evidence

that 1) trust in information from elites - not contact with COVID - best explain preferences for reopening, 2) political ideology

and racial and class identif‌ication help explain preferences as well, and 3) the President of the United States is best positioned to

generate compliance with a school reopening mandate. This study suggests that politics - not public health - drives public

support for schools reopening and compliance with government orders to reopen.

Keywords

COVID-19, school reopening, public preferences

What factors determine public preferences for schools re-

opening in the midst the COVID-19 pandemic? Are people

forming preferences based on public health information,

social identity, their politics, or a combination of all three? In

addition to forming preferences, are people willing to comply

with government mandates to reopen schools? To the extent

that they are, what are the factors that best determine who is

willing to comply versus who is not? These are pressing

questions that emerge in through the continued existence of

the COVID-19 public health pandemic. Moreover, these are

the questions that I will address in this paper.

As the COVID-19 spread rapidly during the early months

of 2020, state and local government leaders largely moved at

rapid speeds to close school facilities around the United

States for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic school

year.

1

However, the question of reopening for 2020-21 be-

came far more complicated. While most states did mandate

that schools reopen, they varied in the fabric of their

guidelines for aspects such as: scheduling, facility require-

ments, and opt-out plans for individual parents and students

(Grossmann et al., 2021). Meanwhile, some states broke from

the central guidelines structure and appropriated decision-

making control to local districts. As state and districts

scrambled, the President and the Department of Education

sent out strong messages in favor of schools reopening with

limited federal resources to support the process.

The intergovernmental confusion around the school re-

opening process provides a challenge for public schooling

and for democratic accountability (Manna, 2006;Wong,

2008;Cohen & Moff‌itt, 2010;Henig, 2013). In terms of

public schooling, the pandemic raises questions as to who is

responsible for COVID-19-related decision-making and

implementing special protocol. Meanwhile, the account-

ability issue raises questions as to whether public concerns

are being heard and met. These issues forge together to create

questions around the larger issue of public compliance. If the

public senses uncertainty from policymakers and/or believe

that policymakers don’t have their best interest at heart, there

could be incentive to avoid complying with mandates. During

a massive public health crisis, non-compliance, when the

right policy is in place, is a proverbial highway for further

transmission.

This paper examines public preferences towards reopen-

ing schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. I uncover the

factors that best predict support for reopening schools. I then

move to examine the issue of public compliance with orders

1

Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jonathan E Collins, Brown University, Box 1938, Providence, RI, USA.

Email: jonathan_collins@brown.edu