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The number of Americans who are satisfied with the quality of K-12 public education has plummeted to a new low of 32%, with Democrats powering the plunge, according to Gallup in a new survey released September 7.
The analytics firm has been surveying American adults’ satisfaction with K-12 schools for 27 years. This year, satisfaction was found to be not only at its lowest point over this period of time, but also the current survey found satisfaction has dropped 11 percentage points in just the past two years. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with K-12 government schools has climbed to a record high of 67%.
“Satisfaction has averaged 44% since 1999,” Gallup explained. “After peaking at 53% in 2004, it has only been above 50% once, at 51% in 2019.”
“Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of education students receive in kindergarten through grade 12 in the U.S. today — would you say you are completely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied?” the survey asked participants.
Results showed that only 8% of American adults are “completely satisfied” with the quality of K-12 education, while 24% are “somewhat satisfied.” Meanwhile, 36% of those surveyed are “somewhat dissatisfied,” while 31% are “completely dissatisfied.”
With political affiliation as a factor, the survey found 35% of Democrats, 32% of independents, and 25% of Republicans are completely or somewhat satisfied with the quality of K-12 education.
“Democrats’ and independents’ satisfaction levels are record lows by three points and one point, respectively,” Gallup noted. “Republicans’ satisfaction was lower only in 2023, during the Biden administration.”
The polling firm underscored that while Democrats in Gallup’s trend of surveys traditionally express higher levels of satisfaction with K-12 public education than Republicans, “Democrats are largely driving the recent drops in satisfaction.”
“Since 2024, satisfaction among Democrats has fallen by 19 points, including by seven points over the past year, while independents’ satisfaction is down 10 points and Republicans’ is down six points,” Gallup observed.
Gallup reported that a separate online survey commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation asked participants to explain the reasons for their dissatisfaction with the quality of K-12 education.
“Republicans and independents are most likely to cite what they perceive as a lack of teaching basic skills,” the pollster noted. “Roughly equal shares of dissatisfied Democrats mention a lack of teaching basic skills, lack of funding or resources, and poor quality of education or inferiority compared with other countries.”
Respondents to the online survey were asked to rate K-12 schools in six areas: preparing students for college; preparing students for work; preparing students to adapt to new technologies; using artificial intelligence (AI) effectively; working effectively with others; and thinking critically and solving problems.
“Schools receive their highest marks for preparing students to adapt to new technologies, with 44% rating this area positively (as excellent or good) and 17% rating it as poor, the only measure where poor ratings fall below 20%,” Gallup reported. “Positive ratings of college readiness (32%), effectively using AI tools (30%) and working well with others (28%) are similar among U.S. adults.”
American adults gave low ratings to K-12 schools in the area of preparing students for their work lives, with only 21% expressing that schools are doing an excellent job in that area while 38% rate their performance as poor.
“Preparing students to think critically ranks last, with just 20% giving schools an excellent or good rating and 47% a poor rating, the only plurality among the six measures rating schools as doing a poor job,” Gallup observed.
The Gallup survey was released just days before the New York Post reported that homeschooling has “exploded” 200% over the past 15 years in New York City due to an “illiteracy and innumeracy crisis” in the nation’s largest public school system.
According to 2025-2026 data from NYSED.gov, the number of homeschooled children in the state of New York has soared to 53,905 – a number that has more than tripled since 2009-2010.
“In New York City, those figures are also rising — with more than 14,000 children being homeschooled at last count,” the Post reported, adding that homeschooling has surpassed even charter school enrollment in both the state and city with homeschooling rising nearly 8% since 2023 while charter school enrollment has increased 3.1%.
“For the past few decades, New York’s schools have been in a death spiral of worsening performance and exploding costs,” Zilvinas Silenas, president of the Empire Center for Public Policy think tank, told The Post.
New York homeschooling advocate Laurie Block Spigel, founder of HomeschoolNYC, highlighted one reason children are failing to learn to read in public schools.
“They’ve stopped teaching whole books because you can’t test comprehension of a whole book — you can only test an excerpt,” Spigel told The Post. “How does that build readers? They’re teaching students how to write badly and how to hate reading.”
Mother of four Adrienne Jensen was at first skeptical about homeschooling, but ultimately refused to risk her children’s education in a system that appeared to be failing.
“In the beginning, our reasons for homeschooling were mainly about rigor and being able to give our kids a quality education without having to hope that they got ‘good’ teachers [and] without strategizing to live in a ‘good’ school district,” the Upper West Side mom explained to The Post, but now acknowledges she enjoys that her family can spend half their time “outside or at museums and other city institutions, really living while we learn.”
“At this point, I can’t imagine making my kids spend all day, every day, inside the same four walls when there’s so much life happening out here,” Jensen said.
Further information regarding the Gallup survey:
A random sample of 1,200 American adults participated in the Gallup telephone poll. Results based on the total sample have a margin of sampling error of ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, while results based on a sample of 233 parents of K-12 students have a sampling error of ±8 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
A random sample of 2,143 American adults also participated in the Gallup online poll. Results based on the total sample have a margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, while results based on a sample of 530 parents of K-12 students have a sampling error of ±5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
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