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Politics K-12 kept watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: Federal, States.

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Most Educators At Least Slightly Wary of Wading Into Politics, Survey Says

By Andrew Ujifusa — December 13, 2017 1 min read
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It’s quite a time for American politics. But how are people working in schools handling it? We decided to ask them.

“Educator Political Perceptions: A National Survey” is a just-released poll of the nation’s educators from the Education Week Research Center. This fall, the research center surveyed 1,122 teachers, school, and district leaders about how they approach politics. We asked them about their views on school choice, LGBT rights, immigration, and of course, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

Here’s one notable thing the survey found: Most educators are at least slightly skittish about getting involved in political situations.

“Sixty-five percent have avoided political activities at least a little out of a concern that they might create problems with their jobs in education,” the Education Week Research Center reports, based on the chart at the top of this blog post.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. About half of those who responded were teachers, and another 19 percent were principals.

Check out the full set of stories highlighting our survey of educators below:

And read the full survey and the results here:

A version of this news article first appeared in the Politics K-12 blog.