During my 35-year career in education, I have been fortunate to work with an amazing array of education leaders in the United States and across the world. One of my favorites has been the education survey sage Steve Farkas. I first met Steve in 2002 at a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation board meeting. Steve was working as Research Director at Public Agenda, and I was just starting out with Fordham. Steve is tops, and you can check out a compendium of his work here.

Over two-plus decades I worked first with Steve on projects in Ohio for Fordham. This work had an impact on the Buckeye State’s education conversation and debates. How could it not when the research tackled issues like Yearning to Break Free: Ohio Superintendents Speak Out, Ohioans are Uninformed About Schools, and Losing Ohio’s Future: Why college graduates flee the Buckeye State and what might be done about it. Over time Steve and I became friends as well as professional colleagues. When I moved to Idaho in 2013 to launch and lead the education nonprofit Bluum, we stayed in touch. Steve and his partner (and now wife) Ann Duffett, have done substantial survey work in the Gem State for the J. A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, Idaho EdNews, and for Bluum over the last decade.

During Steve’s most recent visit to Boise, I talked to him about the lessons he’s learned speaking with thousands of parents, students, and educators and numerous education stakeholders across the country and in Idaho over decades. Following are some of the most interesting insights from our conversation, which I hope will be of interest to others who care about education in America and want to do better by students and families.

Terry Ryan: Let’s get into education and what you’ve learned and can share.

Steve Farkas: One of my favorite studies, which we replicated several years later, was a study of education professors. The theory being that was the factory of origin, that’s the place that produces the teachers. And anything that was wrong, either ideologically or pedagogically, with teachers, originated with these professors.

Terry: Do you believe that?

Steve: Well, in speaking with teachers and parents over time, they persistently tell me that classroom management is a problem. They see a lot of not handling kids well in the classroom, and they say discipline and respect are number one and number two in importance for learning. Yet, the professors of education just completely downplay that. It’s not what they focus on.

Terry: It’s pretty basic, and our friends at the Fordham Institute talk about this a lot: You have to have control in the classroom if kids are expected to learn. It’s so interesting that the schools of education don’t get it.

Steve: If you’re a 22-year-old, and you’re coming into the classroom, and if it’s an urban environment, or even any environment where kids mess around, how do you handle that? So many new teachers get flustered with basic classroom management, and they don’t have the techniques. That’s a key problem, persistent over the years I’ve been speaking with parents and teachers.

Terry: What else jumps out at you on the teacher education front?

Steve: We have found that professors of education downplay and dismiss, or are dismissive of, the importance of facts, knowing facts, of knowing dates, of knowing geography. I’ll never forget what one professor said to me: “I don’t need for them to know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. I need for them to understand the impact on the indigenous people.” So that’s a bit ideological too. But the important thing is, as you shared with me the other day, one out of six Americans cannot name a branch of government. There’s a reason why the teachers are not teaching it, because to them, you could always just look it up.

Terry: How did you get into the public survey business?

Steve: I knew there was a firm called Penn & Schoen that did New York City’s polling and worked with politicians across the country. I got on with Penn & Schoen as a research analyst. This was 1990, and in those days the survey world was at its prime. And you could turn around a random representative phone survey in 24 hours, and it was scientifically sound. People would pick up the phone and they would answer you. They had a call center. You would write a questionnaire. And I learned the business. I learned some very interesting things. One of the most memorable things that happened in that period was when I listened in on the surveys. An old man picks up the phone. He answers the questions asked of him, but he’s answering the questions by thinking about the questions and giving his own answers. This is a perennial problem in this work. The survey was prompting him to say excellent, good, fair, or poor. And he says, “Well, what I think is, on the one hand . . . On the other . . . .” It’s taken 10 minutes. He hasn’t gone through the second question yet. The interviewer is telling him, “Uh, sir, you really have to use the categories that we give you.” So, the older man, smart, he says, “Oh, I see you’re just like everybody else. You really don’t want to hear what I think and what I have to say,” and he hung up. And I said, “Wow, what a lesson about public opinion surveys that are trying to capture what people are thinking, but we’re really not. We’re forcing them into these categories.”

Terry: That’s a great story. It sounds like you learned a lot.

Steve: It was fast. I worked there for about eight months, and it was the equivalent of working for two years. It was so intense. It was the first time I saw a focus group, which was a fascinating tool to me. I was watching a video of a focus group to be more specific and I’m thinking, wow, here’s a place where people are getting a chance to really explain themselves. I don’t remember the exact topic being discussed, but it didn’t matter. It was the technique that really got me. After eight months, I resigned. I had to find another job because I was starting a family.

Terry: What came next?

Steve: I spoke with my mentor Bob Shapiro from Columbia University, and he said, “There’s a job I heard about at Public Agenda. Go there.” They interviewed me for one full day, and by the weekend they offered me a job. After some back and forth with Deborah Wadsworth, I took it. It was the greatest job I ever had.

Terry: How long were you there?

Steve: I was there for 13 years. I worked on immigration. I worked on things like saving Social Security and crime and foreign policy. I worked on education many times. I conducted over 150 focus group discussions with teachers, students, parents, and administrators while at Public Agenda. I was the principal author of over 100 major opinion studies.

Terry: In short, you became tops in the field.

Steve: I had great issues, and I had great budgets. They would give me like $250,000 to do a study. I’d conduct focus groups, and I became better and better at the focus groups. I really honed my skills, and because I have a little bit of an accent, and I look a little weird, I could get people to open up. I learned that you need to be an honest human being in front of these people and you need to be interested in what they have to say. If they think you’re listening to them and you’re genuinely curious, you could ask them provocative questions like, “That doesn’t sound right what you’re telling me.” I do this all the time.

Terry: You mentioned that one of the most interesting studies you did was around superintendents and school districts. Say more about that.

Steve: I did a study on four school districts. It was called Divided Within; Besieged Without: the politics of reform in four American school districts.

Terry: Which four districts?

Steve: At the time they were anonymous, but I can tell you now because everyone involved is long gone. One was San Diego. The others were in Westchester (NY), Little Rock, and Santa Fe. It was a great study. I learned the most important lesson that I ever learned. You could have the most finely tuned and evolved reform plan for the schools, and it will fail. It will fail because of the inner divisions within school districts. The politics, the teachers being suspicious of you, the teachers as individuals. Then you have the teachers union. School districts are archaic. School districts are what I call hyper-pluralistic. I just don’t believe school districts can function well. There are too many cloistered interests that fight and resist and keep their head down. And when a reform movement comes around, they say it’s just another reform. Keep your head down. Talk about the rubber band. You can stretch it out and then when somebody leaves it snaps right back.

Terry: Exactly.

Steve: Reformers come up with new names for rehashed reform. They trademark and they have to dance to this new language, but it’s all fake. Nothing really happens. You have the super active parents. They are kind of their own interest group. The teachers and the administrators and the business community and the realtors, and these school districts are so divided within and always constantly being attacked from the outside. What are you doing for them? You have elected school board members that get like 8 percent of voters to elect them because no one shows up for off-year elections and then you have laws, legal restrictions, and states forcing things and the federal government trying to force things. My conclusion is that school reform is impossible. It’s impossible for traditional schools to get better. Not because there are no good ideas. There’s no lack of great ideas, but the politics will always destroy any reform of a school district.

Terry: That’s a pretty bleak appraisal. Is it naive to think that public charter schools can be the savior of public education? A lot of people believe it. I believe it.

Steve: Maybe. You have had a special confluence of circumstances in Idaho that you didn’t have in Ohio. These conditions that allowed charter school growth, health, and success in Idaho are unique. But what’s nice about charter schools is that they’re divorced from the politics of school districts. The history of districts has become so heavy. You know, charters in a place like Idaho can take advantage to be freer of politics. A sort of fresh start. This is much harder for charter schools in places like Chicago where politics dominates both the district and the charter schools.

Terry: All right. Let’s switch gears. Let’s talk a little bit about Idaho and what you’ve learned.

Steve: In the Idaho surveys we’ve done, we have a whole section dedicated to what are the absolute essentials to parents that the public schools should teach. Over and over, we hear the same thing. And what you think would come out comes out: basic math, reading, writing, history. This is true across demographics, it’s true by race, its true by pretty much any way you slice it. And this is true not just in Idaho but for most Americans. But when we talk to people face to face, they also brought up other things that are important to them: work habits, good work habits, discipline, respect in the classroom. This is what they want for their children.

Terry: Where are parents when it comes to technology? Do they want to see teachers replaced by bots and screens?

Steve: What’s interesting—and Idaho is a microcosm of what’s happening in the world—10 or 15 years ago they talked about computers and technology in mostly positive ways. “It’s so important,” they’d say. Technology and computers would rise to the top of the list as an absolute essential. Now, there’s blowback.

Terry: Why?

Steve: Well, I think people’s personal experiences matter. Parents are coming to understand there’s something unhealthy about your child looking at a cell phone for two hours straight.

Terry: Why are they buying phones for their kids when they’re five, then?

Steve: Listen, that’s part of the pushback. People are starting more and more to limit screen time. People are starting to pay attention to screen time. A rebalance because they see an endless focus on technology. What about social skills? I want you to play outside. You know, we used to play outside. This is where you learn how to handle things. How to deal with people, socialize. Parents talk about this a lot now. How do you learn how to deal with people who are different from you? I had a parent ask me recently, “How do you live with people you are forced to live and work with? Isn’t that the point of public schools; to bring people together for one another as citizens?”

Terry: Fascinating. What other changes are you picking up on?

Steve: Whereas college used to be really the be all and end all of K–12 education—you know, the requisite, “That’s our goal. Get my child into college and everything will be better.”—parents now have a lot more questions about the value of a college education because of the money. Partly, it’s the return on investment. What do you get out of it? Is it a skill, a profession? That’s number one. Number two, what about the student debt that you’re saddled with for the rest of your life? Is it worth it? Parents also worry about their kids going to colleges that teach their children things that are against their values. In Idaho, I have heard parents tell me they are traditional Christian parents, and they really worry about what their kids will be exposed to in college. But mostly I think it’s the cost and doubts about whether there is a value add in a college education today.

Terry: Might it just be that they want their kids to learn skills and be able to get a job that pays the bills so they can raise a family and have a decent life?

Steve: That’s a very good question, because the other thing I was going to say is the whole notion of learning a trade and technical education has risen especially since the pandemic. People also see it in their lives. Look at the guys out there building those buildings. The big difference is that middle class parents used to say, when I first started working in Idaho over a decade ago, “That’s great. You know, the technical trades are great.” And then I said, “Well, is that what you want for your child?” Parents would respond, “No, no, no. I want my child to go to college. Everybody else can go to trade school.” But today, I believe that’s shifted. The colleges have also shot themselves a little bit in the foot by letting kids waste time and earn degrees that are largely worthless in a practical sense. Americans are very pragmatic and practical people. I think that’s one of their great strengths.

Terry: I agree with that. If it doesn’t seem to work, why keep doing it?

Steve: Sure, but the college pathway still works for some people. We did a couple of studies in Idaho with Hispanic parents. And part of what we learned is, first of all, they love Idaho, which is amazing. They’ve experienced prejudice, but they love Idaho. They wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m just generalizing now. Obviously, there’s a lot of diversity within the Hispanic community, but whereas the first generation never finished high school, they really are insistent that their kids finish high school. And if your child finished high school, you want your child to go on to college. I interviewed some Hispanic parents and one of them said to me, “I took my son to work on the roof. I wanted to show him what it’s like to work hard.” And he’s saying to me, “This is what’s waiting for you. You want it, it’s there. But if you want to do a little better, you want to be a little more comfortable in life, finish your schooling.”

Terry: Over the last decade you’ve talked to hundreds of people across Idaho about education and schools. What are the three to five essentials they think our schools should have?

Steve: Parents in Idaho want their children to go to a school where they see respect and an orderly environment. And when they see a school that’s out of control, a classroom that’s out of control, it doesn’t work for them. The other one I have heard every time I talk to parents is class size. Parents say, “How can you teach 30 kids? It should be more like 15. It’s so much easier to manage a classroom with fewer kids.”

Terry: That’s interesting in that there is little evidence class-size reduction does anything to improve student performance. It just drives up costs. Where do you see other disconnects between parents and their attitudes and what education research might tell us?

Steve: One of the things I’ve seen over and over is how little regard parents have on a collective basis for test scores. They don’t really look at standardized test scores. A minority does. A highly engaged kind of critical consumer segment of parents look at test scores. They evaluate where the teachers are from. Those are usually parents who have bounced around a lot and are comparing schools. But if you’re in a community and don’t move, most people do not look up their school’s test scores or compare them to other schools in the state. Most parents—and this is true in our Idaho experience—have accepted what’s given by their schools.

Terry: I hear parents say they want more choice, and lawmakers in Idaho have given them a lot of school choice. The governor just signed a law that offers parents a $5,000 tax credit for private schools. How much do you think that will impact family decisions in Idaho?

Steve: For working parents, $5,000 is a big amount. I think most parents will look twice and think about it if they know about the opportunity. It will take a while for this to have an impact that educators will feel, but it might.

Terry: Now, is it push or pull? I mean, is it because they’re leaving what they think is a place that isn’t working for them, or it’s because, “Oh gosh, this is such a great opportunity, I have to jump at it.”?

Steve: I think for a lot parents, teachers that care and schools that are respectful and safe are crucial, and they often feel like they don’t get that in a regular district school. So they have to hold their noses, and there’s a lot of people who would switch out of their schools if they think they can. I believe public educators are right to be worried. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s beyond the capacity of traditional schools to create respectful schools where teachers care about kids and deliver quality learning opportunities.

Terry: What advice would you give to our public schools to help ensure that they stay relevant, vibrant places that parents want their kids to go to?

Steve: Number one, make sure that the schools are safe and comfortable places for kids and their families. It’s not a militarized situation that parents are looking for. Orderliness is a better word maybe. It’s a productive place. Kids are doing work rather than horsing around and throwing things at each other all the time. That’s number one. Schools can do that. Teachers need to communicate authentically with parents. I say authentically, even though I hate the word. It’s a very trendy word, but it is appropriate in this context. There’s 5,000 ways to reach parents now. Cell phones, texts, emails, online platforms, right? But what a parent would love to hear is if their child is struggling, they’d love a phone call from the teacher who knows and cares about their child. That’s communication. It’s not something that you just check off. Communication is so important, and the teachers can do this. Teach in a way that engages the kids.

Terry: I think we got the school side of this—what schools should know and what we should be advocating for when it comes to schools—which is important because we do a lot of things with schools. What advice would you give a young couple who just had a child, and they’re starting their journey as parents?

Steve: First of all, reading. Reading and a love of books is the most important gift you can give a child. It opens up the world to them. It makes them comfortable with the language. I learned how to speak English by reading it. Expose your children to books early and read to them. And let them tell stories. Discover the joy. So that’s at home—just the respect and love of books and learning. As your child gets older, pay attention and talk to teachers, because a teacher will tell you the truth about the schools if you get friendly with them. And I would look at test scores. Most parents don’t. Most parents are not critical consumers.

Terry: Do you think schools are honest with parents most of the time?

Steve: I think they try, but it’s hard. I don’t think schools tell parents enough that they have responsibilities if they want their kids to do well in school. As a result, schools take on more and more social responsibilities that were not theirs to begin with. And they can’t do it. They’re not good at it, because schools are to a degree political institutions. Schools take on more responsibilities that belong to the parents, and then they say we don’t have enough money. Well, of course you don’t have the money. You can’t to do it all, and frankly they shouldn’t.

Terry: Does it take courage to tell a parent you have some obligations, you have some responsibilities?

Steve: Schools are afraid to have those conversations now. Schools and school districts have become very fearful institutions. They are wary of causing ripples, of saying, “I don’t think you’re doing a good job with your child.” They’re very fearful of calling in authorities when that needs to happen. They’re very cautious. The schools are taking on more and more, and it does create a lack of honesty. And they’re afraid of lawsuits. A lot of schools end up being in a defensive posture, kind of like a goalie. Your job becomes purely defensive, and you’re worried about being attacked. You’re besieged all the time by forces that can be activated.

Steve Farkas is the co-founder and president of the Farkas Duffett Research Group, which specializes in conducting opinion surveys and focus groups. Terry Ryan is chief executive officer of Bluum, which is dedicated to promoting education innovation and improving school governance.