Pessimism, the Federal Government, and Classroom Censorship

Digging deeper into the Schooling in America survey

The 13^th annual Schooling in America survey was recently released, providing an inside look into what parents and the public think about K-12 education in 2025.

Many of the trends will be familiar to those who have followed previous iterations of the survey. To wit, parents love school choice.

If you’re interested in a general overview of the survey results, my colleague Colyn Ritter wrote a great summary. But I’d like to highlight three areas that might have taken a back seat to the other questions that we asked.

1. The public is pessimistic on education

One of the questions that the survey tracks every year is how people feel about K-12 education across the country. In 2025, about two-thirds of Americans (68%) think education is going in the wrong direction. This isn’t quite an all-time high level of pessimism—we hit that mark in 2023 and 2024, when 70% of Americans said education was on the wrong track.

School parents feel slightly more optimistic than the general public. Even so, 6 in 10 school parents (59%) say that education is on the wrong track in America.

There is a marked political divide in sentiment towards K-12 education. A majority of Republican school parents (52%) say that education is on the right track. Only 37% of Democratic school parents and 31% of independent school parents feel optimistic about the direction of education.

2. Americans see a need for federal involvement in education

In this year’s survey, a new question focused on what role Americans think the federal government should be taking in K-12 education. Respondents had the option to select whether the government should play a major role, a minor role, or no role for each category.

The majority of Americans (50-60%) believe that the federal government has a major role to play in many aspects of K-12 education: providing funding for schools serving students with disabilities, providing funding for low-income schools, ensuring equal opportunities in education, protecting students’ civil rights at school, administering financial aid for college, and holding schools accountable.

When we also include responses that the federal government should at least play a minor role, 75-80% of Americans agree that the government has a part to play in each of those areas.

It’s remarkable how much Americans do agree on when it comes to what the government should be doing in K-12 education. The stark political divide all but vanishes in the answers to this question.

3. Classroom censorship is observed more by private school parents

In another new question for the 2025 edition of the survey, current school parents were asked if their child’s school limited classroom content in the past year. Specific examples included limitations on books, curriculum, topics of class discussion, and materials displayed in the classroom.

Roughly one-fourth of public school parents reported that their child’s school has limited classroom content, with the most common type of restriction being on topics discussed in class (26%).

In contrast, about 4 in 10 private school parents said their child’s school limited classroom content during the past year. The most common type of restriction was limits on books, curriculum, or other educational content, reported by 45% of private school parents.

Without further information, it’s difficult to discern whether increased content restrictions in private schools might be a result of intentional curation by private school parents or a result of larger cultural and political discussions on what’s appropriate for kids. In any case, the gap between public and private school classroom experiences is certainly worth noting.

This was originally published to our Substack.