Americans' satisfaction with the quality of K-12 education nationwide has hit a record low, fueled by a growing political divide and worries that schools are not adequately preparing children for college and future employment.

According to an August poll released Tuesday by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, and shared exclusively with Reporters, only 32% of American adults say they are “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied with the U.S. school system.

This marks an 11-point drop over the past two years and the lowest level since Gallup began polling on this topic 27 years ago.

Concurrently, discontent has escalated to an unprecedented peak of 67%.

Education and school policy experts contend that these findings are profoundly alarming, yet hardly unexpected.

The recent downturn is being driven primarily by Democrats, whose satisfaction has plummeted by roughly 19 points since President Donald Trump commenced his second term in 2025.

Independents have likewise witnessed a decline in their satisfaction, falling approximately 10 points relative to 2024, whereas Republicans have experienced a more modest decrease of around 6 points.

Jack Schneider, director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, stated that the Trump administration has weakened public trust by framing schools as political arenas, limiting what teachers may say in class, and pursuing the elimination of diversity programs and the dismantling of the Education Department.

"It is deeply alarming. We stand on the brink of the dismantlement of the public education system as we have long recognized it," Schneider stated.

He added that Democrats harbor particular apprehension regarding Trump's flagship school choice initiative, which would allocate taxpayer-funded scholarships to cover private school tuition for children.

However, political factors alone fail to account for this discontent.

According to Gallup polling, public trust in educational institutions has steadily eroded since the COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures, which in turn intensified learning setbacks, psychological distress, and a host of related challenges.

Headlines have consistently depicted a nationwide decline in test scores, particularly in reading, conveying the impression that schools have struggled to recover from the pandemic-era lows.

“We’ve had a steady stream of bad news about test scores and other social trends that could be driving this,” said Sarah Reckhow, a political science professor at Michigan State University who specializes in public policy.

“There’s a great deal of debate, discussion, and noise about technology and AI in education,” she said.

And recently, kids’ screentime at school has dominated education headlines locally and nationally.

Nevertheless, parents' views on their own children's education differ considerably.

Around two-thirds of parents with school-age children express satisfaction with their child's schooling—a figure that, although marking a low point in the trend, with dissatisfaction not having been this high since 2013—still represents double the 32% satisfaction rate with U.S. education among the general adult population.

This reflects a consistent pattern of parents feeling more confident about their own schools than about the narrative they hear from politicians and media reports on the national situation.

"When people weigh in about the nation's schools, what they are commenting on are 98,999 schools that they haven't set foot in," Schneider said.

A separate survey, also conducted in August by Gallup and Walton, asked Americans how well they believed schools were equipping children for the future.

Merely 2 in 10 respondents rated schools as doing a “good” or “excellent” job of fostering critical thinking or readying students for the contemporary labor market.

Schools received their highest accolades for preparing students to adapt to emerging technologies, with 44% awarding them a top rating in this domain.

Gallup senior education researcher Zach Hrynowski contends that the findings underscore a pervasive disillusionment with institutions at large.

“There is a prevailing sense of disillusionment across the nation at present,” Hrynowski remarked.

“The public is disheartened and perceives that no institution is functioning with any real efficacy.”

The initial Gallup survey was carried out by phone from August 3 to 24, 2026, using a random sample of U.S. adults aged 18 and older.

The sampling error margin for all U.S. adults is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points, while for parents of K-12 students it is plus or minus 8.3 percentage points.

The second survey, involving 2,143 U.S. adults aged 18 and older, was conducted from August 3 to 17, 2026, using a sample from Gallup's probability-based panel, which is designed to represent the U.S. population.

For all U.S. adults, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.0 percentage points.

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