“There are clear priorities that overwhelming numbers of Americans on both sides of the aisle can support,” said James Lane, CEO of PDK International, a professional organization for educators that administers the annual survey. “If I were a candidate for any office at the federal level, I would want to know those things that have broad support because they’re likely to have an opportunity for success.” 

But beyond those narrow avenues of agreement, the country is separated by large partisan differences on issues from student mental health to paying for college. Eighty-six percent of Democrats want the next administration to focus on mental health and college affordability, compared with less than two-thirds of Republicans.

American voters also vary widely on their views of Washington’s role in education. Former President Donald Trump says he would dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, push for universal private school choice and expect schools to promote patriotism, according to his . On the Democratic side, Vice President Kamala Harris would push for more “stringent guardrails” on charter schools, revive an effort to pass and expand the to provide up to $6,000 for families with a newborn. 

Less than half of Americans — 45% — approve of how the Biden administration has handled education policy, the same they gave former President Donald Trump in 2020. But less than a third say they’d trust Trump on education if he’s elected again in November. Their views on a potential Harris-Walz administration are unclear — the poll was conducted before the disastrous debate that sparked President Joe Biden’s departure from the race. 

Lane, who served as acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education in the Biden administration before joining PDK last year, declined to comment on the president’s education track record. Attitudes toward the candidates might have shifted slightly if the poll had been conducted after Harris became the nominee, he said, but views on the major issues likely wouldn’t have changed much. 

The large partisan gaps are surprising given that many issues “don’t really have a straightforward partisan connotation,” said David Houston, an education professor at George Mason University. Public pre-K, for example, has long held bipartisan support at the state level, but a federal role in expanding access is a much higher priority for Democrats than Republicans, 71% and 48% respectively. 

The poll also shows that 54% of Americans overall — and 70% of public school parents — say education will play an extremely or very important role in the upcoming presidential election. But Houston is skeptical. 

“I would be surprised if education was the top-of-mind issue that would be deciding those votes,” he said. That could change, he said, if the race is really close. “Anything that moves the vote count a fraction of a percent matters in a head-to-head race.”

Across the sample of over 1,000 participants, there are also striking differences in responses by race. Support for a greater focus on helping students catch up in school, addressing mental health and reducing college costs is roughly 20% higher among Blacks than whites. 

The largest gap is on the issue of protecting students from discrimination, with 87% of Black respondents saying they want more attention paid to civil rights, compared to 51% of whites. Hispanic and Black Americans were nearly tied on wanting the next administration to strengthen access to public pre-K — 66% and 67% respectively — but just half of white respondents viewed it as a priority.

The Trump platform doesn’t mention early learning, but a for his potential second term, released by the conservative Heritage Foundation, would eliminate Head Start, the federally funded program for low-income families. While for 3- and 4-year-olds remains a plank in the Democratic platform, Biden was not able to win Congressional support for the issue when he ran on it in 2020.

Views on charters

Charter school expansion was the only issue where less than half of Americans — 35% — want an expanded federal role. Surprisingly, just half of Republicans called it a priority, perhaps reflecting the party’s increasing shift toward education savings accounts, which allow parents to pay for private school tuition or homeschooling costs with public funds.

“[GOP] interest in charter schools has really petered out, compared to their heyday in the 2010s,” Houston said. “The school choice wing of the party has its energies focused elsewhere.”

Among Democrats, who often accuse such schools of siphoning students from traditional outlets, less than a quarter wanted more federal attention on charter expansion.

Enrollment trends tell a different story, said Sonia Park, executive director of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, a network that encourages socioeconomic and racial diversity. Charters overall have seen continued growth — a 2% increase last year, — during a time when the student population in district schools was flat or declining. 

“Parents want quality public school choice, regardless of where they are, and charters are part of that,” she said.

Democrats promise to pick up where the Biden administration left off on charter policy. According to the 2024 , additional federal funding for charter expansions or renewals would hinge on whether local districts determine they “systematically underserve the neediest students” — a change that goes beyond restrictions the Biden administration adopted in 2022. 

‘Harrowing’ results on teaching

With Harris’s selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher, as her running mate, education is likely to get frequent attention during the fall campaign. But Lane, with PDK, wants to hear specific plans to address ongoing in the teaching workforce. Relief funds that allowed districts to hire more staff will soon expire, a reality that already contributed to a wave of . Some districts are still starting the school year with , and another shows just 16% of teachers would recommend the profession to their friends.

For the first time, the survey also asked the public about AI in education, a subject that often generates mixed reactions. Over 60% of Americans support AI for tutoring, test preparation and lesson planning. But only 43% favored students relying on AI for help with homework.

In keeping with its focus on teaching, PDK International routinely includes a question in its poll that asks parents whether they’d support their children going into education. The organization runs , a nationwide program that aims to get middle and high school students interested in the profession.

Just four in 10 parents say they’d like to see one of their children become a teacher — a significant drop from the three-fourths of parents who favored that choice when the question was first asked in 1969. The primary reason: low pay. 

​​”We’re going to have to address salaries,” Lane said. “The fact that 60% of folks wouldn’t even recommend a teaching career to their own children is harrowing, considering the needs that we have.”

New polling on the American education system shows widespread approval of local schools — along with ominous signs of dissatisfaction among both parents and the public at large.

In by PDK International, a professional organization for teachers, over 1,000 adults expressed higher levels of faith in their community’s public schools than have ever been recorded in the survey’s 48-year history, with 54% giving them an A or B. That figure represents an 11-point increase from 2018 and a robust show of support given the extraordinary challenges of post-COVID learning recovery.

But respondents also showed only modest trust in educators to deliver capable instruction on potentially controversial subjects like race, gender and sexuality. In keeping with other recent public opinion data, that result was split across partisan and ideological lines, with Democrats showing greater trust than Republicans. And the percentage of respondents saying they would want their own children to become teachers fell to just 37%, a record low.

Teresa Preston, PDK’s director of publications, said the perceived desirability of the teaching profession had been declining in recent years and that its current low might reflect public recognition of the hardships inflicted by COVID.

Observed Preston, “2018 was the first year when we had a majority of respondents say that they would not want their child to become a teacher, and now it’s an even higher percentage. It suggests continued awareness of how tough teaching is, especially during the pandemic, and all the pressures that teachers have been under.”

Poor compensation was the most commonly listed reason for the negative reaction (cited by 29% of respondents), followed by workplace demands and stress (26%) and lack of respect (23%). Across 13 previous polls that included a version of that question, an average of 60% of respondents favored the idea of their children working in classrooms.

Perhaps more concerning was the low confidence in educators to teach sensitive subjects. Although fully 72% of public school parents said they had faith in their community’s teachers, compared with 63% of the full adult sample, far fewer members of the general public trusted teachers to “appropriately” handle politically contentious issues. 

Only in the case of U.S. history and civics did bare majorities believe teachers could do this (56% and 50%, respectively); in five other areas — social-emotional growth (48%), racial and ethnic diversity (46%), media literacy (46%), gender and sexuality (38%), and how the history of racism affects America today (44%) — fewer than half of respondents said the same. Among parents, who generally thought more highly of teachers’ capacity to navigate dicey subjects, just 44% said teachers would handle gender and sexuality appropriately.

Those figures dovetail with findings from other recent surveys. from October showed a six-point dip in trust for teachers between 2019 and 2021. More recently, a survey released this week by the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education a majority of state residents wanted parents to be able to opt students out of content that they found objectionable.

Notably, stark divisions existed in which demographic groups trusted teachers in their community most (though margins of error were higher for these subgroups, given their smaller sample sizes). Black respondents in particular said they trusted teachers less than their white counterparts with respect to every controversial subject. Just one-third said they believed teachers would handle gender, sexuality or racial diversity appropriately.

A partisan disparity prevailed as well. While Democrats said they trusted local teachers by a nearly 50-point margin (73%, versus 27% who said they did not), the spread among Republicans was less than half that (60%/40%). Just 58% of independents said they had confidence in local teachers, compared with 42% who didn’t. 

Preston noted that respondents did not list reasons for their assessment of teachers — it is possible, for instance, that African-Americans want much more intensive instruction in racial diversity than is currently offered, she said.

“I think it does speak to the fact that Americans have a lot of questions about what’s going on in their local schools and schools across the nation,” said Preston.

That view was shared by others in the education community.

Shannon Holston, the chief of policy and programs at the National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group that favors strengthening teacher preparation and classroom standards, said it was “heartening” that parents and the public gave high marks to their local schools. Still, she added, the declining prestige of the profession was a major concern that could be driven by the perception that “teaching doesn’t require specialized skills and knowledge.” 

“The significant increase in the number of people who wouldn’t want their child to become a teacher is concerning,” Holston said in a statement. “To elevate the status of teaching so that we can attract and retain the strong, diverse teacher workforce our children need, we must set a high bar for entry into the classroom and provide teachers with comprehensive support and the competitive salaries they deserve.” 

The poll’s full sample was 1,008 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

Correction: Shannon Holston is chief of policy and programs at the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Just 43% of parents with children in public schools are in favor of teachers and other school staff carrying guns on campus, conducted in response to the May 24 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. That’s , when 36% of parents supported the measure in the aftermath of the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 people. 

Among all poll respondents, including those without school-aged children, 45% opposed arming teachers. That’s a sharp contrast from other school security measures, like metal detectors and armed police, which have wide support among the general public. Broadly speaking, the public’s opinion on school safety efforts have remained stable over the last four years despite an increase in spending on campus security after the Parkland and Uvalde tragedies. Following the Uvalde shooting, President Joe Biden signed a law that included new gun control measures and an for student mental health care and campus security. 

On the question of arming teachers, respondents’ perspectives varied widely based on their political affiliation, noted Teresa Preston, PDK’s director of publications. Efforts to put more guns in schools mirrors broader partisanship around gun control, she said. While three-fourths of Republicans support arming teachers, just a quarter of Democrats agree. 

“Some of it has to do with how the divisions in our country about the presence of guns in public spaces has sort of continued to inform peoples’ opinions about the presence of guns in schools,” Preston said. “If they are inclined to be against more gun control measures they might be more inclined to say ‘Well yes, I support having guns in public spaces.” 

More than half of states allow schools to arm teachers or staff in at least some circumstances, by the RAND Corporation. In Ohio, a law approved this year made it easier for educators to carry guns in their classrooms by requiring just 24 hours of training. Meanwhile in North Carolina, a school district for a decision to equip campuses with AR-15 rifles for school-based police to use in the event of an active shooting. 

Arming teachers is even less popular among educators themselves, by the American Federation of Teachers. Among union members, 75% of respondents said they oppose arming teachers. In a press release, union President Randi Weingarten said “the answer to gun violence is not more guns.” 

“Educators, parents, administrators, counselors and students want teachers to teach, not engage in a shootout with AR-15s,” Weingarten said. “Especially now, as kids are headed back to school with more stress and trauma, and teachers are facing interference from politicians trying to ban books and single out certain students — we want to be focused on solutions, not sharpshooting. Arm us with books and resources, not guns.” 

Yet the AFT poll also showed high support for armed police in schools — putting educators on the same page as the general public. Despite police failures in Uvalde, and an ongoing debate about their ability to keep kids safe from mass school shootings, the PDK poll found an overwhelming 80% of people support school resource officers, including 94% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats. 

Preston said she was surprised to see such high support for school-based police among Democrats. After George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, leading Democratic lawmakers embraced calls for police-free schools and some school districts removed officers from their campuses. 

“Perhaps it has to do with people being willing to try anything, being willing to be open to lots of different possibilities,” she said. 

Similarly, 78% of people said they support metal detectors in schools and 80% said they support mental health screenings for students. School-hardening efforts like metal detectors and armed teachers saw markedly higher support among less-educated Americans compared to those with college degrees. Compared to postgraduates, those without college degrees were 29 percentage points more likely to have strong support for metal detectors and 12 percentage points more likely to strongly support armed teachers. 

Despite the overall support for school security efforts, the results suggest that the public does not see the measures as a panacea, with a minority of respondents expressing strong support for each of the measures. Just 21% of respondents said they “strongly support” armed teachers and 45% said they “strongly support” armed police on campus. This dynamic suggests that people are generally interested in a range of strategies that could keep kids safe at school “but they’re not necessarily passionately committed to them.” 

The poll, which has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points, was conducted June 17-25 and includes a national random sample of 1,008 adults. PDK plans to release additional poll results on Americans’ attitudes toward public schools on Aug 29. 

Momentum may be building toward a full school reopening this fall, but some families say it’s too late.

“My daughter will never go back to public school,” said Michelle Walker of McMinnville, Oregon, outside Portland. She took out a loan to move her fourth-grader MacKenzie into a private school and is working to mobilize families in reopening groups across the country to do something similar.

Nationally, public schools lost 1.5 million students last school year — roughly a 3 percent drop and the largest since the beginning of the century, according to federal data. Much of that enrollment decline was driven by parents holding their kindergartners out a year. The question now is whether the profound frustration over remote learning and mask mandates, combined with recent outrage over critical race theory, could motivate more families to seek other options.

Experts say it’s too soon to know for sure whether enrollment loss will continue, but some see signs that the downward trend isn’t over.

In Virginia’s , officials initially projected that the 2,000 students who left the district last school year would return this fall. But in May, board members said they weren’t so sure and were recalculating the budget based on a lower figure of 28,500 students, down from almost 30,000.

Some of those families not returning could be homeschooling, according to a from the Home School Legal Defense Association, which suggested the jump in that population seen last year will continue. And EdChoice’s surveys showed in homeschoolers from 8 percent in 2020 to 14 percent this year

Walker, an organizer of , is among those calling for parents to abandon public schools. The volunteer network of reopening advocates plans to announce a “s�ٰ������” Thursday, with parents pledging to homeschool or enroll their children in pods or private schools this fall. Across various platforms including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and email, Walker said the network has reached roughly 180,000 participants. In Oregon alone, the group’s goal is to see 30 percent of the state’s more than 560,000 students withdraw before October, which would drastically impact state funding for education.

‘Attacks on public education’

Whether the group has the power to follow through on its bold promise or not, one thing is clear: District leaders are they won’t make up last year’s enrollment as they watch more students leave for . Some hope to to school this fall, using outreach methods such as text messages and home visits. And public school advocates are worried about the lingering impact of school board protests over critical race theory.

Joshua Starr, CEO of PDK International, a professional organization that the public annually on attitudes toward public schools, said parents value racial diversity in schools. A couple months ago he thought the uproar surrounding anti-racist efforts would blow over.

“Now I think otherwise,” he said, but added there is not yet reliable data on what “the silent, but reasonable, majority actually thinks” about the theory.

New voters shows more than half of parents feel positive toward public schools in general and even more positive toward their local schools, with 60 percent giving them an A or B. But Bruce Fuller, an education and sociology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said “a slice of parents still appear angry over union leaders’ reticence to reopen schools last winter, even after the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] gave its OK.”

He predicted further jumps in enrollment by August, especially if districts don’t allow virtual or more personalized options for families who prefer that.

The California survey didn’t specifically ask about critical race theory — a legal argument that racism is embedded in U.S. systems and institutions. But Democrats and Republicans were split over whether schools should spend more time on lessons about racism and inequality.

Open Schools USA formed in November over the reopening issue. In March, organizers held marking one year of the pandemic in at least 50 cities. But Eileen Chollet, a Fairfax, Virginia, parent who interacts with Walker’s group through Facebook, said she wondered whether it had enough organizing power to “stage a national campaign.”

But Sarah Ronchak, an Elk River, Minnesota, parent and another Open Schools USA organizer, said their efforts are part of a broader movement away from traditional schools.“It will definitely take off,” she said. “However, it may take one more year of public school for people that are on the fence to really make a move on it.”

Ronchak, a full-time youth basketball referee, said she got involved with the group because “distance learning was an absolute nightmare” for her autistic son. And when he returned to school in February, he was bullied for not wearing a mask even though he had an exemption, she said. Minnesota has lifted its statewide mask mandate, but some local jurisdictions haven’t. She said she’ll likely homeschool this fall.

Walker said the group has members across the political spectrum, but their concerns have expanded to include potential COVID-19 vaccination requirements and universal mask use, issues that more conservatives have opposed. Nonetheless, she added, they recoil at the term “Trumpers.” The leaders ran a GoFundMe campaign to set up their website, but otherwise the group has no outside funders. Walker spends her own money on flyers, posters and graphic design.

Some organizers of the group are also active in , which has filed litigation over practices in schools related to critical race theory. Founder Elana Yaron Fishbein has become a leading voice on Fox News arguing schools are trying to indoctrinate children, and members of local chapters are behind many of the at school board meetings.

“Parents want children to learn about racism. We don’t want it taught necessarily in the way that it is,” said Walker, a Democrat. “If you’re going to tell the bad and the ugly, you need to tell the good and the beautiful.”

National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues said Open Schools USA has sought guidance from her group in the past, but is not an affiliate. Rodrigues, however, agrees more families may be considering other options this fall.

“We watched a nationwide failure of our public education system,” she said. “I expect to see a percentage of parents that say, ‘I’ve actually found something that works better for my kids.’”

The National Parents Union’s most shows that more than 40 percent of parents would still choose online learning or a hybrid model this fall, but the survey didn’t specifically ask about leaving public schools.

Walker’s hope is that if districts see more enrollment loss, they’ll pay more attention to the needs of parents.

“After their numbers drop drastically, our hope is to be afforded a meeting where we can negotiate terms of enrollment,” she said. “It’s insane that no one has represented our children throughout the decision-making process that directly affected them.”

When the RAND Corp. during the winter, COVID-19 health concerns, delaying kindergarten and opposition to virtual instruction were the leading reasons behind enrollment loss, not “politically motivated anti-[critical race theory] reasons,” said Heather Schwartz, a senior researcher at RAND. But she added, “the subject is fast-moving.”

Khalilah Harris, acting vice president for K-12 policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, characterized the protests over critical race theory as mostly a fringe issue, but added “fringe can become mainstream with the right messaging.” She doesn’t, however, expect “large swaths of communities would move their children to private school and explain it as a result of not wanting students to learn difficult yet accurate American history.”

Some advocates for in-person learning have never strayed from their core issue. They include Chollet, a member of Open Fairfax County Schools. The Fairfax district students last year, but is expecting to regain most of that this fall.

Some partisan Democrats tend to “paint all parents in favor of open schools as right-wing astroturf,” she said. “I won’t deny that the reopening groups are probably redder than the surrounding areas, but Fairfax is one of the bluest areas in the country.”