Americans Unhappy With the Quality of Public Education
Americans’ opinion of public education has sunk nearly to the bottom of the barrel.
The percentage of adults who say they are dissatisfied with public education increased steadily from 62 percent to 73 percent between 2019 and 2025, according to a Gallup survey released this month. The percentage of adults who now feel satisfied with public education is the lowest since 2001, the report notes.
The report—which tracks Americans’ satisfaction across 31 aspects of U.S. society or policy such as the military, health care, and crime—found that public education ranked 29th among those 31 areas.
The Gallup poll comes less than a week after news that students’ reading scores had plunged further on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a steady decline that started before school building closures during the pandemic.
That slide continued despite a big infusion of federal aid to schools during the Biden administration.
Precisely what is driving the findings is unclear. It could be related to the falling test scores, parents’ lingering dissatisfaction with months of remote and hybrid schooling that led to learning loss, or the negative discourse about race and gender and charges of indoctrination that have been leveled at teachers since 2020. The poll didn’t plumb why American adults held their views.
Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research for Gallup, said the pandemic and related moves to remote and hybrid learning did “set the ball rolling for this heightened dissatisfaction.”
When Gallup has asked parents in other surveys about their own local public schools, their satisfaction historically has been much higher than Americans’ views of public education more generally.
In addition to public education, more Americans are dissatisfied than satisfied with policies on health care, foreign affairs, immigration, the environment, guns, race relations, energy, crime, taxes, abortion, and the economy, among other issues. The nation’s efforts to deal with poverty and homelessness garner the lowest satisfaction rating from Americans.
In contrast, what Americans tend to be satisfied with are the nation’s military strength, the overall quality of life, the position of women, the opportunity for people to get ahead, and the acceptance of gay and lesbian people in the country.
Millions Flow to Florida’s Wealthier Families Through Expanded School Voucher Law
Once upon a time, vouchers were meant to help lower-income families and those with disabled children escape substandard neighborhood public schools. The expansion of a law in Florida is changing that pattern, funneling significant resources to better-off families.
More than 122,000 new students started using vouchers for the first time in the 2023-24 school year, and nearly 70 percent were already in private school, many in some of Florida’s priciest institutions, according to the nonprofit that administers most of the state’s scholarships. About 40 percent came from families too wealthy to have qualified previously.
The implications of that shift are vast, an Orlando Sentinel analysis has found. For example, a significant amount of the money is flowing to Florida’s most expensive private schools, many of which served few voucher students in the past. Campuses that advertise annual tuition of $15,000 or more added more than 30,000 voucher students last year.
Program critics say Florida is now spending an inordinate amount of its education resources on the wrong people rather than focusing on system improvements that would be good for all students.
“This is just a subsidy for wealthier people—people who already have the advantage,” said state Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Democrat.
Skidmore is among those who fear the impact of the voucher explosion on public schools—which are losing money as students shift to private education—and the implications of handing millions in taxpayer dollars to private schools over which the state has little control.
Critics also suspect the state’s new law actually undermines choice for many low- and middle-income families. That’s because those families may struggle to afford private schools that charge more than the $8,000 scholarship—and an increasing number are boosting tuition, powered by the fuel of taxpayer subsidies.
“It’s creating private school for all, but it’s really private school for all who can afford it,” said Rep. Fentrice Driskell, a Democrat.
OCR’s Priority Under Trump Is Antisemitism, Raising Fears Others’ Rights Will Be Neglected
New guidance from the U.S. Department of Education signals that the agency will shift its focus to Jewish students in enforcing civil rights protections at schools.
That’s the upshot of new guidance the Education Department is expected to follow. The department’s office for civil rights has been ordered to prioritize complaints of antisemitism above all else as it molds to President Donald Trump’s agenda, raising fears that other rights violations will go unpunished.
Craig Trainor, the acting leader of OCR, told staff members this month they will be expected to aggressively pursue complaints involving antisemitism and hew closely to Trump’s wishes.
Already there are signs of a hard turn on civil rights enforcement, including new actions focused squarely on anti-Jewish bias and transgender issues.
Responding to a White House order in January, the office launched new antisemitism investigations at five universities. Days earlier, it opened an inquiry into the Denver public schools over an all-gender restroom that replaced a girls’ restroom while leaving another one exclusive to boys. Trump subsequently ordered schools that receive federal money to ban transgender girls from participating in women’s sports.
The office’s fleet of lawyers have mostly been sidelined while the new administration shifts priorities. Daily work has been frozen, and sources say there’s a new blackout on communication with schools, colleges, or those submitting complaints. Questions about how to enforce Title IX go unanswered, leaving schools in the dark as they navigate a new memo from the agency.
With a rigid focus on antisemitism and gender identity, there’s fear the office won’t give adequate attention to racial discrimination, mistreatment based on disability, or Islamophobia, legal experts say. The office is required to process all complaints it fields, but politics can play a role in setting priorities and choosing which cases to pursue.
Raymond Pierce, who led the office under Democratic President Bill Clinton, said focusing on antisemitism alone doesn’t fulfill the mission of the office. “Antisemitism is an issue,” he said. “But the Civil Rights Act is broader than just religion.”
The impact of Trump’s changes are most likely to be felt by Black students and those who are disabled, according to lawyers and advocates.
Collective Bargaining for Utah Teachers in Peril
Republicans in Utah are well on their way to outlawing collective bargaining for public employees, including teachers.
Both chambers of the legislature have approved the law, which is in the hands of the state’s GOP governor, Spencer Cox.
Labor experts say the proposal would establish one of the most restrictive labor laws in the country as Republicans seek to curb the political influence of teachers’ unions.
The move in Utah comes as President Donald Trump is preparing to gut the U.S. Education Department to the greatest extent of his power by slashing contracts and firing probationary employees.
Teachers’ unions have been outspoken opponents of Republican policies in Utah and other states where lawmakers have sought to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, expand school choice vouchers, and restrict transgender restroom use and sports participation in schools.
State employees could still join unions under the bill. But the unions could not formally negotiate on their behalf for better wages and working conditions.
The Utah Education Association has called on the governor to prove his support for teachers by issuing a swift veto.
The bill did not pass with veto-proof margins, meaning that if Cox were to reject it, Republicans would need to pull in more support to override his veto.
The proposal is not anti-union or anti-teacher, said its sponsor, Sen. Kirk Cullimore. “We here have passed bills to directly support teacher pay when it wasn’t getting done at the local level, when it wasn’t getting done by the union,” he said. “We’ve taken it upon ourselves to ensure that they feel respected.”
Not everyone feels that way. “This bill turns a civil servant into an indentured servant,” Sen. Kathleen Riebe, a teacher and Democrat, said just before the vote.
Its Electric Buses in Limbo, District Sees Costs Escalate
Even school buses are affected by the Trump administration’s policy shifts.
Just ask the Ritenour school community. 69ý and officials gathered this month to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of electric school buses, a year after being awarded $9.5 million in federal funding. They had confetti poppers ready to explode and orange- and black-clad cheerleaders with pompoms.
The only thing missing for the Overland, Mo., district was most of the buses. Of the 24 promised vehicles, delivery of 21 is suddenly in limbo after a recent executive order from President Donald Trump paused a vast swath of initiatives that have anything to do with clean energy.
The last-minute uncertainty about the remaining buses puts its carefully planned fleet overhaul in a state of incompletion. The district owes $830,000 to a vendor for 24 charging stations that are “hooked up and ready to go,” said Superintendent Chris Kilbride—and still awaiting grant dollars to pay for them.
“This project is a little bit of a ‘bridge to nowhere’ at this point,” said Kilbride. “It’s frustrating, but we’re still hopeful.”
The 21 missing electric buses are sitting in Litchfield, Ill.
Meanwhile, each day without the new buses costs the district more money, since the electric fleet stands to eliminate at least half of Ritenour’s fuel costs and 40 percent of maintenance costs, officials said.
If all the buses ultimately arrive, the estimated savings from the electric fleet is expected to reach $3.3 million within the next five to eight years—helping make the district “good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Kilbride said.
Ritenour’s electric buses are manufactured by Thomas Built Buses. They could have arrived several months earlier, but Hurricane Helene affected operations at the company’s North Carolina bus factory, Kilbride said.
The district has more than 3,700 students who rely on school buses to get to and from school each day.
