by Brendan Clarey
The overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe schools should hide a student’s gender change at school from parents, according to a recent poll of over 2,200 likely voters.
The issue of parental notification regarding a student’s gender transition has been hotly contested in recent years, especially in California, where the state has sided against school districts that have passed policies to let parents know students are using different names or pronouns.
The Center Square’s Voter Voice Poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 1,000 Democrats, 1,000 Republicans and almost 200 true independents.
The poll shows that almost three-quarters, 71%, of likely voters said a teacher should notify parents if their students say they want to go by a different gender.
Kate Guenther, Franklin News Foundation
David Byler, chief of research at Noble Predictive Insights, told The Center Square that the poll’s findings are “robust.”
“Pollsters have asked this in a lot of different ways in a lot of different states with a lot of different response options, and this is a durable finding,” Byler said. “If a student changes how they identify in terms of their gender at school, parents should know. That’s what the electorate thinks.”
“The electorate thinks parents have the right to know if something as major as a gender identity change is happening at school,” Byler said. “They want to be involved in their children’s lives and the rest of the public thinks they should be involved in their children’s lives.”
“In terms of demographics, you’ll notice that when you get numbers these lopsided, you don’t get many individual demographics that really disagree, it’s everybody basically agreeing to one extent or another.”
Kate Guenther, Franklin News Foundation
Eighty-six percent of Republicans said they supported parental notification of a student’s gender change, while 8% said parents shouldn’t get to know; 68% of true independents said teachers should have to tell parents, and 17% said they should not.
A majority of Democrats, 55%, said they supported parents knowing about such changes, with 28% of party voters opposed. The only demographic with higher opposition was 18-34-year-olds, 34% of whom said teachers should not tell.
“It’s only the far part of the progressive wing that would say no here,” Byler said. “And everybody else is saying if kids change their identity or their pronouns, that the parents have to know.”
Byler said Republicans are using their advantage on the issue with voters approaching the November election.
“There’s a lot of messaging around trans issues,” Byler said. “If you look at the ads the candidates are running, you see that Republicans are running towards all the issues related to trans students in schools and Democrats high-tailing it away from those issues or publicly moderating or denouncing the far-left’s stances. It’s polls like these that explain why.”
“Public opinion is on the conservative side of this issue when it comes to how to handle the specifics of how trans issues play out in schools,” Byler said.
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Brendan Clarey is a contributor to The Center Square.
