\n<\/p>\n
Public satisfaction with K-12 schools nationally hit a record low this year, with about a third of Americans saying they are content with the quality of education students receive, according to a nationally representative survey conducted by Gallup, in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation.<\/p>\n
Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are \u201ccompletely\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d satisfied with the nation\u2019s school system, Gallup reported. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s an 8-point drop since last year. And it is 1 point below the previous record lows, which were recorded in 2000 and 2023. Gallup has been surveying the public on this question annually since 1999.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of respondents\u201424%\u2014are \u201ccompletely dissatisfied with the quality of the nation\u2019s K-12 schools, while 38% are \u201csomewhat dissatisfied.\u201d To be sure, public satisfaction with K-12 schools has rarely risen above 50% in Gallup\u2019s survey\u2014hitting 53% in 2004 and 51% in 2019, which were all-time highs.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s low satisfaction numbers seem to be at least in part due to Democrats and independents feeling less satisfied with K-12 schools since President Donald Trump regained the White House, said Megan Brenan, a senior editor at Gallup.<\/p>\n
Democrats\u2019 satisfaction with schools fell 12 points to 42% after Trump took office, and independents\u2019 satisfaction is down to a new low of 34%.<\/p>\n
National politics is clearly having a big impact on the public\u2019s overall view of K-12 schools, experts say. \u201cI think that\u2019s what we\u2019re looking at here,\u201d Brenan said. Respondents\u2019 \u201cown partisanship is affecting the way that they answer the overall K-12 question.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty-nine percent of Republicans said they were satisfied with the nation\u2019s schools, which is statistically similar to last year\u2019s level of 31%. However, that\u2019s a shift from 2017, the beginning of President Donald Trump\u2019s first term, when Republicans\u2019 levels of satisfaction with schools shot up to 45%, from 32% in 2016.<\/p>\n
Why no bump for Republicans this time around? One possibility: The Trump administration has been largely negative about schools and has been cutting funding for them, Brenan suggested.<\/p>\n
In open-ended responses in the Gallup survey, Democrats worried about how problems like lack of funding affected students\u2019 educational experiences, Brenan added. Republicans, on the other hand, were more likely to worry that schools push a political agenda, she said.<\/p>\n
One potential bright spot in the survey for educators: Parents of K-12 students are largely content with their local schools, as has been the case for the more than a quarter-century that Gallup has surveyed on this topic.<\/p>\n
About three-quarters of parents say they are either \u201ccompletely\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d pleased with the quality of education their oldest child is receiving, compared to 6% who are completely dissatisfied and 17% who are somewhat dissatisfied.<\/p>\n
That is in line with Gallup\u2019s results for the past 26 years. Over that time, an average of 76% of parents have said they are satisfied with their own child\u2019s school.<\/p>\n
Gallup included a new question on this survey, asking respondents how they thought schools were doing in preparing students for college and the workforce.<\/p>\n
About 1 in 5 U.S. adults\u201421%\u2014said schools are doing an \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d job getting students ready for jobs, while 33% said the same about preparing students for college.<\/p>\n
Notably, younger adults, ages 18 to 29, were more likely to give higher ratings for college-and-career preparation than older adults, Brenan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who have recently experienced K-12 education are more positive than those who are just observing it from the outside,\u201d Brenan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Public satisfaction with K-12 schools nationally hit a record low this year, with about a third of Americans saying they are content with the quality of education students receive, according to a nationally representative survey conducted by Gallup, in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation. Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are \u201ccompletely\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1622,7332,102,124,177,4752,588],"class_list":{"0":"post-22666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-alltime","9":"tag-blame","10":"tag-hits","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-public","13":"tag-satisfaction","14":"tag-schools"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}