Only 11 Percent of Parents Think Masks Help Kids At School: Poll

Mask mandates have been a topic of debate among key stakeholders in the school community. Among parents, face coverings don't have much support.

A new poll from Politico and Harvard found that only 11 percent of parents said that mask requirements helped schooling experiences, while just over 40 percent said mandates hurt their overall experience. Nearly half of parents said it made no difference.

Parents found masks to be particularly harmful to their children's social learning, with more than 45 percent saying those interactions were hurt by mandates. Thirty-nine percent also said masks negatively impacted the mental and emotional health of their kids.

More and more school districts have begun lifting their mask mandates in recent weeks as the national trend in COVID-19 cases continues to decline, but the White House has warned that a return to masking could be expected if the emergence of a new variant causes another wave of infections.

While parents who identified as Republicans were more likely than their Democrat counterparts to say those mask requirements hurt their children's scholastic experiences, 45 percent of those who identified as independents also said the same.

Robert Blendon, lead researcher of the survey and professor of health policy and political analysis, emeritus, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Politico that politicians should take note of the shifting beliefs among parents.

"The parents who are against it are not going back," he said. "They've concluded it's not good for children's education and it's two years of this. When you have a substantial number of parents who think their children are being threatened, it's going to matter politically."

Parental rights has emerged as a leading political issue among candidates running in the 2022 midterm elections, especially after Republican Glenn Youngkin successfully won his governor race last year on a campaign advocating for parents to have greater say over their children's education.

Since Virginia's gubernatorial election, a number of Republican lawmakers across the country have introduced legislation that claims to support parental rights, although critics of these bills argue that they attack certain groups of people.

For example, the "Parental Rights in Education" bill in Florida, which has already reached Governor Ron DeSantis' desk, has been dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by LGBTQ activists.

While proponents of the controversial bill say the legislation protects the youngest students from classroom discussion related to gender identity and sexual orientation, others say it further alienates LGBTQ students and children whose parents may be in a same-sex marriage.

In just the first three months of 2022, 38 states have introduced legislation related to LGBTQ discrimination, according to a tracker from Freedom For All Americans.

Teachings of critical race theory have also become a battleground among political candidates vying for votes of parents.

An effort seeking to restrict what teachers could say about race and racism failed in Indiana earlier this month after some in the Republican caucus argued that the bill didn't go far enough to target divisive topics in schools.