While confidence in public schools continues to decline, Americans are still more likely to give a high grade to their local schools than to the nation’s education system as a whole, a new poll finds.
Yet despite their mixed opinions about schools, the annual PDK Poll on Public Attitudes Toward Public Education also found that a majority of Americans think teachers are underpaid, and they oppose shutting down the U.S. Department of Education.
Meanwhile, parents are growing more open to private school choice programs. Among parent respondents, 59% said they would probably send their child to a private or religious school if they “were offered public funds to cover at least a portion of the cost.”
The findings come after Republicans have passed private school choice programs, like tax-credit scholarships, at the state and national level. They also come amid a surge of concern about how schools engage parents in their children’s education.
“I don’t think a lot of this is surprising to us, frankly,” said Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, an organization that advocates for parents’ involvement in education. “We have long said that parents are deeply frustrated and growing even more frustrated by the fact that we are not adequately communicated with [by schools]. Our concerns and priorities are often dismissed.”
The poll of 1,005 U.S. adults was conducted from June 24 to June 30 by the Wason Center for Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University. Previous years’ PDK Polls were conducted by Gallup.
Americans are more satisfied with their local schools than the system as a whole
Asked to grade schools, 43% of poll respondents gave their “own community’s schools” an A or B, down from 53% in 2013. Only 13% of respondents gave the nation’s public schools an A or B rating, down from 26% in 2004.
“Eroding confidence in public schools can be seen across a few different sets of responses to questions,” said Sarah Reckhow, a political science professor at Michigan State University. “But I don’t think the causes of that are entirely clear.”
While national narratives about topics like critical race theory and the fallout from COVID-19 may have contributed to drops in satisfaction, parents and the public may also be driven by academic concerns like declines in student achievement and how schools teach literacy, Reckhow said. She pointed to public interest in coverage of the “science of reading” and evidence-based literacy instruction.
“The culture war is going to animate some people, but most people really care about whether their kids learn to read,” Reckhow said.
Divides in parents’ satisfaction with input in their children’s education
Seventy percent of parent respondents said they were very or somewhat satisfied with “the amount of say they have in their child’s education,” the poll found.
Responses were sharply divided along demographic and political lines. Fifty percent of Republican parents said they were very or somewhat satisfied, compared to 80% of Democrats and 73% of independents.
One hundred percent of parents with students in private schools said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their say in their children’s education, compared to 61% of public school parents.
Rodrigues, whose children attend both public and private schools, agreed with the perception that private schools are more responsive to parents.
“Schools’ relationships with parents need to be more transformational than transactional,” she said.
That perception may be why the poll showed increasing support among parents for other school options, Rodrigues said. Fifty-nine percent of parents supported using public funds to send children to private or religious schools, up from 56% in 2020, the poll found.
Conservative lawmakers have successfully pushed to to expand or create programs like vouchers and tax-credit scholarships at the state level. In July, Congress created the first federal school voucher program, and 30 states and the District of Columbia have at least one private school choice program, according to an Education Week analysis.
But Rodrigues cautioned about seeing parents’ poll responses as a policy prescription. The survey didn’t ask about specific funding mechanisms or programs, she said, and it asked about respondents’ own children, not a broad policy.
Most parents want to send their own children to schools that welcome students regardless of characteristics like disabilities, she said, and many states don’t have guardrails to ensure that private schools participating in their choice programs don’t discriminate in their admissions policies.
Americans want to keep the Education Department and give teachers a raise
President Donald Trump has cut federal education programs, dramatically downsized staff at the U.S. Department of Education, and pledged to fully eliminate the agency. But 66% of poll respondents opposed or strongly opposed eliminating the Education Department. Among Republican respondents, 46% support or strongly support eliminating the agency, but no Democrats do.
“The case hasn’t really been made,” Reckhow said. “The idea that you’d eliminate the department is a bridge too far, even for a lot of Republicans.”
The Education Department has “become sort of a whipping boy” to blame for everything that’s wrong with schools, Rodrigues said, but many Americans are suspicious of claims that its elimination would fix anything.
Even some congressional Republicans pushed back when Trump withheld $6.8 billion in promised funds to schools, a decision he later reversed, Reckhow noted. And, while some Americans may be skeptical about federal bureaucracy, they support programs administered by the department, like those that support career and technical education and civil rights enforcement, she said.
Asked about a variety of policies and priorities, school safety, student belonging, career and technical education, and addressing teacher shortages, had the highest levels of support. Between 97 and 99% of respondents said those four priorities are somewhat or very important. Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives had the lowest support; 61% of respondents said they are very or somewhat important.
While 92% of respondents called teacher pay an important issue, a clear partisan divide emerged. While 73% of Democrats and 62% of independents said teacher pay in their own communities was too low, just 39% of Republicans did.
The poll results point to a continued need for schools to build trust with parents, Reckhow said. And, as a declining birthrate leads to fewer school-aged children, schools need to communicate their priorities and successes to the general public, even those without current students, she said.
