A record low 35% of adults expressed satisfaction with the quality of the nation’s K-12 education in the latest Gallup survey released Wednesday.
That beats the previous low of 36% recorded in 2000 and 2023 surveys. The polling company first posed the question in 1999.
Megan Brenan, a Gallup research consultant, said a backlash among Democrats and independents against the Trump administration drove the overall slide in sentiment.
“Americans’ satisfaction with K-12 education has generally been influenced by their party identification, with higher levels of satisfaction seen among Republicans and Democrats when their party occupies the White House,” Ms. Brenan wrote in a summary.
Although satisfaction fell more slowly on the GOP side, the 29% of self-identified Republican survey respondents who expressed satisfaction with K-12 education was still lower than the 42% of Democrats and 34% of independents who shared the same view.
Ms. Brenan noted historic pandemic-era declines in math and reading scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, as just 26% of all respondents said K-12 schools “are headed in the right direction.”
According to the latest results released this month, just 22% of high school seniors scored proficient in math on last year’s assessment, while just 35% were proficient in reading.
“The NAEP results show steep declines in K-12 students’ reading and math scores since 2019, with many failing to reach even basic proficiency,” Ms. Brenan noted.
Just 21% of adults responding to the latest Gallup survey agreed with the idea that the nation’s K-12 schools are doing an “excellent” or “good” job preparing students for the workforce.
Only 33% said schools were good or excellent at preparing students for college.
Gallup surveyed 1,094 adults by phone from Aug. 1-20, with a margin of error of ±4 percentage points at 95% confidence.
