








Studies examining public opinion toward the education system long have reported consensus in favor of increasing school funding, teacher salaries, and school choice. Despite this apparent agreement, government reform of the US public school system has proven contentious and challenging for both political parties. New data from a diversity of sources allow us to examine the more contentious aspects of school-funding policy and offer insight as to why education-funding reform has been difficult. We find that from 1998 to 2016, citizens were remarkably consistent in their opinions on general questions of school funding. However, there has been substantial disagreement and change in the public opinion toward national versus local school funding, tying teacher salaries to student performance, and specific methods of increasing school choice. This macro-level stability and consistency and micro-level instability and inconsistency may help explain why implementing reform remains difficult even though the desire for reform is widespread.
