Summer Polling Finds Parents Less Optimistic About the Direction of K–12 Education

With summer coming to a close, parents and students are preparing for the start of a new school year. This summer, we surveyed thousands of adults and school parents across the country on a plethora of topics, including the direction of K–12 education, the role of the federal government in education, school safety, and much more.

In partnership with Morning Consult, EdChoice surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,250 adults and 1,300 school parents each month in May, June, and July. Find the full report here. 

Here are a few of the highlights:

1. School parents’ optimism for the direction of K–12 education dropped across all three levels of governance (local, state, national). In July, 50% of school parents felt K–12 education in their school district was headed in the right direction, down 6-points from March. Parents are generally more likely than not to be optimistic about K–12 education in their local school district, with October of 2024 being the last time parent optimism dipped below 50%. Parents are less likely to feel that K–12 education is headed in the right direction at the state (44%) and national (37%) level, however. Parent optimism for K–12 education at the state and national levels dropped slightly by 3-points and 5-points, respectively, since March. For comparison, Americans are less optimistic than parents about the direction of K–12 education at the local (37%), state (34%), and national (25%) levels.

2. Private school parents are significantly more likely than public school parents to say they are “very satisfied” with their child’s schooling. When asked about how satisfied they are with their child’s schooling, nearly two-thirds of private school parents (65%) report being “very satisfied”, compared to 38% of public school parents.

The gap was not always this wide. As recently as February of this year, the gap was only 12 points between private school parents (52%) and public school parents (40%). Since then, however, the proportion of private school parents who are very satisfied has rocketed up while the proportion of public school parents who feel similarly has leveled off.

Overall satisfaction levels, including parents who are either “very” or “somewhat” satisfied, are much closer between private school (92%) and public school parents (79%).

3. Parents are most likely to say the federal government should play a major role in providing funding for schools serving low-income students and students with special needs. Nearly two-thirds of parents felt that the federal government should play a major role in funding schools serving low-income students (67%) and schools serving students with special needs (65%).

Parents signaled that the federal government should play a major role in other areas too, including ensuring equal opportunities in K–12 education (63%), holding schools accountable (60%), as well as protecting students’ civil rights while in school (60%). Parents were less likely to say that the federal government should play a major role when it comes to collecting and reporting education data (48%) and administering surveys to students, teachers, schools, and school districts (38%).

4. Nearly half of parents are concerned about a violent intruder entering their child’s school. A somber 49% of school parents are either “extremely” or “very” concerned about a violent intruder entering their child’s school. This represents a significant 9-point increase from June 2024, the last time we posed this question to parents. Parents of children in high school are slightly more likely to be concerned than parents of children in middle or elementary school.

5. Providing respondents with a government-reported spending statistic consistently decreases their tendency to say public school funding is “too low.” In July, without any information presented, 54% of Americans said public school funding is “too low.” When shown a statistic on public school funding, however, only 37% of Americans said it is “too low”, a decrease of 17 points. On that matter, Americans are 10 points more likely to say public school funding is “too high” after seeing a statistic.

Similarly, Americans and school parents greatly underestimate per-pupil spending in public schools. When asked to estimate the per-pupil amount in public schools, Americans and school parents guessed $6,000 and $5,000, respectively. These amounts are far below the average ($15,591 FY22 data) across all states for spending in public schools. Even the state with the smallest amount spent per-pupil in public schools (Utah – $9,496) is much greater than the estimations from Americans and school parents.

6. School choice policies, especially ESAs, continue to enjoy strong levels of support as we enter into the 2025-26 school year. At least two-thirds of parents support charter schools (67%), vouchers (70%), ESAs (74%), and open enrollment (77%). These policies also enjoy majority support from the general population, though support levels are typically lower when compared to the support from school parents.

Support for ESAs, in particular, is not only strong but diverse as well. Some of the demographic groups most support of ESAs includes Republicans (73%), liberal/progressive respondents (73%), respondents who are first-generation immigrants (72%), among others.

Sticking to ESAs, universal (being made available to all families regardless of income or special needs) ESAs are consistently more popular among school parents than ESAs based on financial need. Nearly three out of four school parents support universal ESAs (72%), while 59% support needs-based ESAs.

Read the survey here.