As is typical, adults demonstrate far more positive attitudes toward the local schools in their own backyards, with over 40% grading them highly. 

Even so, the results may help explain rising support among parents for private school choice. With 12 states now offering universal education savings accounts or tax credits that can be used for tuition or homeschooling, nearly 60% of parents say they would choose a private or religious school for their child if they were offered public funds. That’s up from 56% in 2020. 

The poll figures offer further evidence of a post-pandemic shift toward alternatives to traditional public schools. In Florida, a majority of K-12 students now use , from district magnet programs to homeschooling with state funds. 

“COVID was a key factor in making people more open to choice,” said Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University and the director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice. He noted that frequent disparagement from Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have contributed to the public’s souring mood.

“It wasn’t until COVID that he started to really attack public schools, and saw the power of pulling that into his larger culture war,“ Harris said. “Is the message sinking in? No doubt. When politicians relentlessly bash any institution, support for that institution goes down.”

He cautioned against reading too much into the low percentage of Americans giving public schools high marks. Many of the 1,000 poll respondents may not have kids in school. While the average voter might be influenced by politics, public school parents answer questions based on their experiences, he said.

The poll from PDK International, a professional organization for educators, comes as the Trump administration pushes to dramatically reduce the federal government’s role in schools while also pressuring them to drop equity-focused programs. Responses show that Americans agree with the president in some areas, but reject other pieces of his agenda.

Closing the Education Department

Two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose eliminating the Education Department and say such a move would negatively affect students. Support for keeping the agency intact is highest among Democrats, but at least a third of Republicans agree it should stay open. Closing the department is far more popular among men (34% in favor) than women (9%). 

Marc Porter Magee, CEO of 50CAN, a national education advocacy group, said that Americans “just aren’t super inclined” to get rid of programs.

“There is a certain ‘more is better’ kind of a vibe,” he said. Even among parents who opt to put their children in private school, many recognize the federal government’s role in holding states accountable for serving students with the greatest needs. “Protecting kids with disabilities probably polls quite well.”

Along with downsizing the department, which has shrunk to roughly half the size it was when Trump took office, the administration has taken aggressive steps to get schools and universities to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Efforts to force schools to comply with anti-DEI orders are still tied up in court, but Trump recently claimed victory. 

“The beautiful thing is, as you know, we’ve gotten rid of the woke. Woke is gone,” last month. “I think pretty well buried. We’re gonna make sure it’s buried.” 

But that’s not necessarily what Americans want. Over 60% of PDK’s respondents say DEI is important, but there’s a partisan divide. Eighty-nine percent of Democrats support such initiatives, compared with 62% of independents and 22% of Republicans. 

Opponents of equity-related efforts, like , president of the conservative Defending Education group, say some schools have rebranded their DEI efforts to emphasize “belonging.” That term has nearly unanimous support from poll respondents. Ninety-eight percent consider initiatives that make students feel welcome at school to be important or very important — second only to keeping students and teachers safe, at 99%.

Over 90% of Americans say boosting teacher pay should be a high priority, and nearly two-thirds agreed that educators’ salaries are too low. It’s a more pressing issue for Democrats, like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who last month that would set annual teacher pay at a minimum of $60,000. Among Republicans, more than a third, 39%, agreed that teachers don’t earn enough.

Support for AI in schools drops

While it ranks lower than other topics, educating students about artificial intelligence and responsible social media use is a top concern for 84% of adults. The Education Department recently issued brief on AI integration, saying that grant funds can be used for tools that personalize learning, supplement tutoring and help students make post-secondary plans. 

Teachers and students are inundated almost daily with AI tools, like ChatGPT’s new “study mode,” meant to help students solve problems “step by step,” rather than just giving them the answer. Khan Academy offers an AI tutor, and research shows some AI tutoring offers promising results.

But Americans’ enthusiasm about AI’s potential in education has dropped since last year. Less than half of respondents support or strongly support teachers using AI to create lesson plans, down from 62% in 2024. Thirty-eight percent of adults think it’s fine for students to use AI to complete their homework, a drop from 43% last year.

Kyla Johnson-Trammell, who recently stepped down after eight years leading the Oakland Unified School District in California, said she’s not surprised about Americans’ deepening skepticism.

“At the end of the day, learning happens when kids have a relationship with the teacher and when they’re engaged in human connection,” she said. But she also sees value in using AI tools to solve specific dilemmas. A teacher might grade 30 essays, but can then use AI to “look for trends across all those papers, like ‘a majority of your students need help being able to write a clear thesis,’ ” she said. “Technology can do that.”

Most educators who try AI don’t stick with a tool more than seven days during a three-month period, according to an by Stanford University’s Generative AI Education Hub. The report, based on data from 9,000 teachers, showed that the 40% who become regular users lean toward teacher-focused chatbots rather than AI assistance for students.

The of AI for educational purposes comes as more states enact policies to ban cellphone use during the school day. have restrictions in place, and while it focuses on college freshman, a finds increases in academic performance once a ban is enforced.

The public largely supports such policies, the poll found. Forty percent agreed with a full-day ban, while 46% said students should only be able to use their phones during lunch and class breaks. 

Some experts are frustrated by the apparent contradiction. 

“This is what I find so completely surreal about the current moment,” Benjamin Riley, who writes about learning and generative AI, last month. “We can’t even say smartphones are being ‘memory holed’ because the bans in schools are happening quite literally at the same time as various ed-tech hucksters are falling all over themselves to push AI into the classroom. Wake up!”

Porter Magee said he worries about the “downstream” effects of devices on student habits, including trouble focusing and a continued . 

“It feels like we’re swimming against a tough tide,” he said.

In 2019, 60% of Americans graded their schools an A or a B. But after more than two years of disruption, 52% give those marks in the latest Education Next survey, which has measured opinions on major education topics for 16 years. 

“Those grades have been going up for a very long time and were remarkably high [early on] during the pandemic itself. In some ways, it was an expression of solidarity,” said David Houston, an assistant professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a co-author of the report. He said that while the public’s views “haven’t tanked by any means, they suggest that if there was a kumbaya moment, it appears to be ebbing.”

As fall elections approach, the results provide a glimpse into how education issues could sway voters. With almost 1,800 responses, the data points to a widening “partisan gap” between Democrats and Republicans on a lot more than just mandating masks and teaching about race. Over time, the parties have grown further apart on issues such as teachers unions, education spending and how they rate their local schools.

“The potential middle ground is truly vanishing,” Houston wrote with Paul Peterson and Martin West of Harvard University. “Public opinion on education issues seems to be increasingly drawn into the powerful current of partisanship in contemporary American politics.”

The Education Next poll, which brings a more conservative lens to education issues, adds to recent takeaways from surveys conducted by left-leaning organizations. Those show that with elections nearing, Democrats may have lost their edge over Republicans on education issues.

In the past, Democrats and Republicans were fairly united in giving their local schools high grades. But now, just 47% of Republicans assign an A or a B, compared with 56% of Democrats. 

Perhaps due to the public’s dimming perception of schools, support for education reforms, including vouchers, charter schools and free college, has bounced back to almost pre-pandemic highs. At the start of the pandemic, there was a decline in support “for almost everything across the ideological spectrum,” Houston said.

Before the pandemic, for example, 49% of Americans supported vouchers for students from low-income families. That dropped to 43% last year and is now back up to 48%

“I don’t think the public had this huge appetite for dramatic change” at the start of the pandemic, he said, adding that they were “interested in getting the status quo back.”

While the survey doesn’t provide a pre-pandemic comparison on the question of homeschooling, it captures growing support for the model — from 49% in 2020 to 54% this year.

Given the challenges of the past two years, it’s not surprising that people feel less favorable toward their schools, said Teresa Preston, director of publications at PDK International, another organization that measures on education.

But true feelings about schools are complex, she said.

“Opinions are so divided that I think it’s difficult to get a clear understanding of how members of the public feel — or how they’ll feel as concerns about the pandemic recede,” she said.

Case in point: Even with waning trust in schools, overall support for increasing teacher salaries has climbed to 72% — the highest since Education Next first conducted its survey in 2007. But the gap between the parties has grown to more than 20 percentage points. 

Despite the lower school ratings, Preston understands why Americans favor boosting teacher compensation.

“Teachers worked tremendously hard during the pandemic, and this may reflect the public’s understanding of how difficult it has been for teachers over the past few years,” she said. 

Experts disagree about the extent of teacher shortages, but with staff vacancies in the news, the public “may be seeing the need to give them more reasons to stay,” she said.

Parents agree, according to another out this week from Lexia Learning, a literacy curriculum company, which was conducted by the Harris Poll. Almost two-thirds of parents with a child in school this fall say paying teachers more would improve retention. And more than 75% said they’re concerned about staff shortages at their child’s school.

‘Deep family engagement’

The drop in support for local schools held true among parents. In a separate Education Next sample of over , 59% gave their local schools an A or B, compared to 64% in 2020.

With enrollment drops and families facing greater hardship, schools have had to work harder to maintain contact over the past two years, said Patience Peabody, executive director of the Flamboyan Foundation, which supports schools’ family engagement efforts.

She saw those challenges up close in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington.

“Family trust was at an all-time low. Where trust was maintained, it was at local schools that had a culture of really deep family engagement,” she said. “You see how well the relationships are rooted when things are spiraling out of control.”

In surveys and focus groups, the foundation heard from parents who wanted their children to feel joy about school again. It donated $125,000 to 50 schools for projects that made learning fun, such as and outdoor . 

As the school year begins and districts drop COVID mitigation measures, parents’ worries over learning loss have eased compared to the fall of 2020, Education Next finds. Almost half say they are confident their children will catch up and just 9% responded that they don’t think their children will recover. The rest said their children didn’t experience learning loss.

And parents say they aren’t overly concerned about how their children’s teachers discuss race-related issues in the classroom, despite widespread attention to disputes at school board meetings and on social media. Another recent poll from NPR and Ipsos showed , with a minority — about a quarter of parents — saying they don’t have enough say over what schools teach.

Almost two-thirds of parents said their child’s school gives the right amount of attention to the topic. But that’s where parents strongly diverge from the general public. Forty percent of Americans overall feel there’s an appropriate amount of focus on the issue, with 54% of Democrats saying there’s too little emphasis and 51% of Republicans saying there’s too much.

There is an “unhappy minority” among parents and the public, and that “could play out in interesting and pivotal ways in the upcoming election,” Houston said.

But he stressed that people can afford to relax a bit. “This isn’t a moment of widespread perceptions of crisis.”