Record-Low 35% in US Satisfied With K-12 Education Quality (gallup.com)
- Reference: 0179376044
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/19/1921238/record-low-35-in-us-satisfied-with-k-12-education-quality
- Source link: https://news.gallup.com/poll/695174/record-low-satisfied-education-quality.aspx
> A record-low 35% of Americans are satisfied with the quality of education that K-12 students receive in the U.S. today, [1]marking an eight-percentage-point decline since last year . This is one point below the previous historical low recorded in 2000 and 2023 for this Gallup question that dates back to 1999.
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> Several other ratings of the U.S. K-12 education system provide a similarly bleak assessment. Only about one-quarter of Americans think K-12 schools are headed in the right direction, while just one in five rate them as "excellent" or "good" at preparing students for today's jobs and one in three say the same for college.
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> Yet, parents of current K-12 students are nearly twice as satisfied with their own child's education as they are with education in the U.S. K-12 parents are also slightly more likely than U.S. adults in general to rate different aspects of education positively, including the direction of education in the U.S. and schools' preparation of students for the workforce and for college. Still, none of these ratings is near the majority level.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/695174/record-low-satisfied-education-quality.aspx
All children (Score:5, Insightful)
When all children are left behind, no child is left behind. The system has become too paralyzed in trying (and failing) so hard to never fail a student or even make them feel like they might be, that they're failing all of the students collectively.
Re:All children (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. It does pay politically to make the lowest somewhat functional education level the standard. Because then smart people that could cause problems leave, join the oppressors or get disillusioned and never amount to anything. As a result, mediocre (and below) "leaders" do "well". Of course, longer-term it all comes crashing down as the works throws complex challenges at all societies and failure to solve them comes with harsher and harsher problems.
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> When all children are left behind, no child is left behind. The system has become too paralyzed in trying (and failing) so hard to never fail a student or even make them feel like they might be, that they're failing all of the students collectively.
There's a lot of good data out there that shows about 10% of adults are not able to navigate the world without some assistance. I could write plenty on the how and why but that's quite a rabbit hole to go down, and gets into the controversy of IQ scores and their ability to test for future success. Maybe I can summarize by pointing to studies out of the US military. While the testing for military service isn't exactly an IQ test it does correlate very well, both are testing for comprehension of much the
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This survey is from 2006, but what it says about education in the US was dreadful. One fifth of US high school graduates couldn't find the Pacific Ocean on a map, two thirds thought that the population of the US was between 750 and 1.5 billion (it was under 300 million at the time), three quarters thought English was the most widely spoken native language in the world, and in spite of the fact that the US military had been in Afghanistan for five years only 12% could find that country on a map.
[1]https://site [unt.edu]
[1] https://sites.geography.unt.edu/~rice/geog3100/3100handouts/nationalgeographicpoll.pdf
Maybe you could pay teachers enough (Score:3)
And fund schools enough, and get more concerned with actual education practices like not teaching books at all but re-written excerpts dumbed down for different reading levels, and acknowledge that the US teachers union is more interested in paying teachers by seniority and keeping bullying sex pests in their jobs rather than educating children at all regardless of your stupid assed "political teams"
It's ironic that the people putting the most energy into education in the US are drooling fascist Karens who get a rush forcing school libraries to ban random books. At least school shootings have become so blase loner gunman are turning to assassinating politically charged celebrities instead. You started solving one of the problems by doing absolutely nothing, good job USA!
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Are there legions of better teachers we can hire right now to do a better job, if in fact that's what we need them to do?
When I was a school kid, I had multiple teachers bust down whatever egos we had (especially in math class) by reminding us that various Soviet students could run circles around us in math with an abacus instead of our fancy graphing calculators.
There are school systems past and present that have produced better testing results on less money spent per student.
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> Are there legions of better teachers we can hire right now to do a better job, if in fact that's what we need them to do?
I believe so.
Too much of hiring in education is based on having the right papers than their ability and motivations to deal with the children and young adults in the schools. If I were running a school and looking for someone to teach classes like biology, health and nutrition, physical education, or psychology then I'd be temped to go to the local hospitals and look for nurses and other staff for teachers. These are people that have to deal with others daily, have shown they care about others, and shown
Re: Maybe you could pay teachers enough (Score:2)
> And fund schools enough
Enough⦠according to who?
Given weâ(TM)ve been throwing more and more money at (public) education for decades and decades and havenâ(TM)t seen the kinds of results desired or promised⦠maybe itâ(TM)s not simply a money issue?
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Depends on location. Teachers in our area make a very good income. $120-150k for a tenured 4th grade teacher, not to mention the state benefits, pension, 2 months off, etc. It serves to not be in a 3rd world state, er I mean Republican ran back-asswards fucktard snowflake state. Same for law enforcement, EMS, fire. They all make very, very good incomes in our Democratic ran state. But move to some place like Louisiana and any of those jobs would be lucky to make even $60k. I'm not sure why anyone take
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[1]We come in fifth [ed.gov] in per-pupil spending by country. Perhaps the issue isn't the amount of money but rather where it's going, e.g. admin and consultants.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
The Republican party has been sabotaging education (Score:3)
Since reagan. So yeah no shit be born on happy with the situation.
It's the classic right wing trick where you take a government program that's working just fine and maybe needs a few touch ups and then yank all the funding while methodically sabotaging it in devious ways and then tell everybody, see we tried to have public services but she just can't do it like the private sector can.
Then you privatize it and get the skin 10 to 20% off the top for your own profit. They have been dancing that Charleston with us for a long time and we just keep letting them do it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I can tell that you have no idea what you're talking about because the vast majority of public K-12 school funding is through local taxes, not federal funding. The federal government has almost no control over it so they can't cut funding. If you look at the actual spending on a per pupil basis it's gone up significantly in red and blue areas alike.
The percentage of students enrolled in private schools tends to be slightly higher in blue states as well. The biggest private schools tend to be Catholic (or
Re:The Republican party has been sabotaging educat (Score:4, Informative)
> I can tell that you have no idea what you're talking about because the vast majority of public K-12 school funding is through local taxes, not federal funding.
About 13% of public schools are funded federally. You say "the vast majority" as if to handwave 13% of their funding as unsubstantial. Most importantly, this funding goes to schools that do not have the local tax revenue to fully support them.
> The federal government has almost no control over it so they can't cut funding
The federal Dept. of Education plays a key role in ensuring equitable access to education. You know how they exert control over local schools? By creating and enforcing (or NOT enforcing) policies, because their job is ultimately to implement and enforce laws created by Congress that apply to public education.
> There are also many states that have charter schools that perform better for less money than the public schools, so it's not a money problem.
Charter schools have an abysmal reputation; [1]approximately 1 in 4 charter schools end up out of business within 5 years [k12dive.com], leaving their students in the lurch and those who paid for it with empty wallets.
It's just a scam to funnel public money into private hands and push indoctrination. Look at all the enshittification that's happened and is currently happening in the name of chasing profits - we cannot afford that in education, financially or culturally.
=Smidge=
[1] https://www.k12dive.com/news/1-in-4-charters-close-fail-five-years/729992/
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Sweden's system isn't considered a success by everyone, including Swedes and their results have trended downward over twenty years. Not that I am saying their system never or can't work but it's also not the only answer. Plenty of nations with all public systems do as well or better.
[1]Sweden’s schools minister declares free school ‘system failure’ [theguardian.com]
[2]Is Sweden proof that school choice doesn’t improve education? [pbs.org]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/10/swedens-schools-minister-declares-free-school-system-failure
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/is-sweden-proof-that-school-choice-doesnt-improve-education
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PBS and The Guardian are unlikely to endorse school choice, as that’s a top pet peeve of teachers unions and both outlets are notoriously loathe to risk teacher union ire. For a more practical, neutral, and scientific study of the problem, look at NYC’s most common charters as a microcosm:
- Highly favored by local minority politicians (Adams).
- Highly opposed by most white democrat politicians (Hochul).
- Highly favored by minorities in general - per Harvard and the NYT.
- Yielding better results
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Thanks for the handwave dismissal of sources you just don't like. I think the NYT is conservative so that doesn't count. It's so easy!
Also sure if we want to go to for that on charters I can also point out plenty of failures in the US but you've already turned this into an ideological issue so who cares.
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> I think the NYT is conservative so that doesn't count.
The NYT is conservative? And Harvard Ed? And Stanford?
> Also sure if we want to go to for that on charters I can also point out plenty of failures in the US
I pointed to an extensive and highly researched article in the lead newspaper in NYC, the NYC mayor, and lengthy research from two top tier universities. You pointed to The Guardian and PBS as if they were even close to neutral on this topic.
> but you've already turned this into an ideological issue so who cares.
Choosing PBS and The Guardian as primary sources is the very essence of ideological. My pointing this out, narrowing down the problem to a more measurable circumstance (NYC), and using a variety of more rigorous sour
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It should be obvious why private/charter schools do better with less funding, they can be selective about who is enrolled.
When I was in high school in the 90s, the top football teams in the state were all patriarchal schools because they could actively recruit and give out scholarships. While these schools may not be very expensive, they are far more expensive than the $50-$100 in fees a family would pay for this child to be in a public school.
When private/charter schools cherry pick from the best appl
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> It should be obvious why private/charter schools do better with less funding, they can be selective about who is enrolled.
Not according to Harvard, Stanford, and the NYT. Receipts:
NYT Nov 2022: As NYC Schools Face a Crisis Charter Schools Gain Students
Stanford “National Charter School Study 2023“
Harvard EdNext: Democrats Divided Over School Choice
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It is actually a conformist (in this case fascist) approach of making everybody "the same" and a small cog in the machine. It is the desire for ultimate control and elimination of everybody that could rock the boat. Such a society becomes stagnant (the US used to avoid that by importing people educated elsewhere, but it looks like that is over now) and eventually collapses under the load of real problems it is not capable of solving anymore.
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As Grover Norquist told a group of legislators in the '90s, "To convince voters that government is broken you'll have to break it first."
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> It's the classic right wing trick where you take a government program that's working just fine and maybe needs a few touch ups and then yank all the funding while methodically sabotaging it in devious ways and then tell everybody, see we tried to have public services but she just can't do it like the private sector can.
The K-12 system in the US has failed. The conservative fix here is absolutely right: institute a voucher system, with the Federally guaranteed funding level, and let parents choose schools. With obvious allowances for students with special needs, rural areas, etc.
It's quite clear that regulation is getting nowhere fast. Even the milquetoast Common Core requirements resulted in a revolt from schools not able to teach even basic literacy.
Uninformed Opinion (Score:3)
Most of us have no basis for evaluating the quality of kids education. Not even our own kids. People are just repeating the messages they see in the media. So while I agree our education system is failing kids, I don't give my opinion much weight. It just means if someone came forward with some realistic plan to improve education I would listen.
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My only basis for evaluating the (public school) US K-12 education system is my own observations on the quality of teaching that was done to my kid when he was in public school, and contrasting to the education I was provided with myself growing up in Europe. The contrast was stark. Most of the 6th and 7th grades were for instance spent on rehashing the exact same subjects as in 5th grade without any significant development.
I was fortunate enough to afford moving him to private education starting in 8th gra
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Want to blow their mind? Buy something for $4.60 and give them $5.10, and then watch the look of confusion on their face. The majority will never figure out that you want two quarters for change, even if you tell them that.
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I do see "kids" when they turn around 20-23 or so and show up in my lectures. The most striking lack I see is inability to prioritize and see and understand larger structures (which is closely related). People sometimes work themselves to death without getting anywhere. People see the details, but not which ones matter and should be remembered and which ones you can look up. People have no clue how to approach a problem that is a bit larger. And there are always some that do wayyy better, and when you talk
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Many parents look at public school as a babysitter.
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> Many parents look at public school as a babysitter.
And increasingly the youth are looking at the public schools as more of their guardian/provider than their biological parents.
Public schools are apparently offering breakfast in addition to lunch. How many parents are so lacking in time and the care for their children to fix them a breakfast? Maybe they don't get a hot meal but is it so hard to set out some fruit, boiled eggs, maybe a slice of bologna on a slice of bread, and a glass of milk? What I described should be a decent breakfast by most standard
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> Most of us have no basis for evaluating the quality of kids education.
I grew up under the (basically) Soviet education system. I can tell that it's waaaaay better than the average K-12.
One easy fix? Have a high stakes gaokao-style exam for the US students. SAT/ACT are about as tough as a wad of toilet paper.
Just take the best ideas (Score:2)
You can do some obvious reforms and also look at what other nations succeed at adapt it your country.
Some obvious changes to me
- Stop linking property taxes to schools, this creates death loops and other issues, just do per-child per-state funding.
- Air conditioning
- Free lunch and probably breakfast too. This is no brainer and I cannot believe it is not the case everywhere.
- Start every kid on a language early, like per-k to kindergarten early. I think it's just a good skill and I wish my schooling had s
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> Start every kid on a language early, like per-k to kindergarten early. I think it's just a good skill and I wish my schooling had started it earlier, my assumption is there some brain plasticity effects in there that pay off over your life. Same with learning a musical instrument.
That is really too simplistic. For example, I am a person with high math skills and high language skills (and was told that "this does not happen" back when). But I have zero interest in music and playing an instrument. That requirement would simply have wasted my time and probably alienated me. Hence what should be done early is to explore talents and interests and then give people opportunities in those areas. Using the same approach for anybody is simply a failed idea beyond a very low level (reading, wr
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Sorry I mean to compare the brain plasticity of learning an instrument early to the language learning not that an instrument should be mandatory, poor sentence structure there.
The language learning I think should be mandatory but the music thing would not although for kids who are interested I think it should be part of their work and not solely an after school thing.
I think something akin to that should be a part of curricula for every kid, effectively a hobby becomes part of your schooling but have some v
Or just study different states (Score:1)
Or just study which states are successful, which are failing, and why. Let’s look at California, Florida, and Louisiana.
California has been at the forefront of adopting modern pedological science for the last twenty years. But there’s a puzzle: its DOE NAEP test score national rank concurrently fell to the middle of the pack. Is it possible that “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and other lead pedagogy books are a garden path? Perhaps their recommendations are reducing disparity between gr
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> linking property taxes to schools
The system was deliberately set up this way, to ensure that people who lived in rich districts got better schools, better teachers, and better facilities. They didn't even pretend it was something else. It's still working as designed, the schools in Benton Harbor, MI haven't been painted in well over two decades and the roofs are leaking in winter. Four hours away the high school in Gross Pointe Shores has a heated indoor pool and they go on field trips to Washington, DC.
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> - Free lunch and probably breakfast too. This is no brainer and I cannot believe it is not the case everywhere.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. You haven't heard that before?
Children need to learn that their parents are the providers and educators, not the schools. Parents cooking a breakfast for their children teaches a lot of important lessons to their children. One important lesson in this is that family is where they should turn to for food when hungry, not the government. Then is lessons on self reliance as they get older, as in learning to prepare their own breakfast.
School lunches should not be free
That is really not a helpful number (Score:2)
For example, are they dissatisfied with too much indoctrination or too little? Are they dissatisfied with a too rational outlook on things or too little of it? And does skills and insights acquired even play a role for that dissatisfaction or not, i.e. is this even about education quality?
US has always had bad schools (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the crazy things about the US economy being one of the most successful economies in the world is that our schools have always been kind of bad, at least at the non collegiate level. I would hope that something like this was a sign we were actually acknowledging our crappy schools but I think this poll's results have far more to do with conservative culture war shit.
We've got conservatives freaking out because schools are encouraging their kids to respect LGBTQ people and are being made to "feel bad about being white" by learning accurate accounts of our nation's history while pushing for anti academic shit like creationism (yes, this is still happening), religious crap in schools, and historic revisionism which turns the left off. My money is on the bulk of this shift in public opinion being driven by all this nonsense and not on a sudden realization of our school's actual problems.
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My friend recently lamented how numerous friends of his became Trump supporters due to the LGBTQ discussions happening in their children's schools. Regardless of how anyone feels about it, it's just not popular and it was a major reason that dickbag was re-elected. Even if it seems like the correct moral decision, the unpopularity of it led to a far worse situation. Choosing pragmatism and reading the room rather than ideological stances could have helped us prevail, but now we're all stuck in a reality
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Yup. Dems need to learn how to take the W quietly instead of rubbing it into R's faces. Cultural shifts take time and if you're not careful with your hard earned progress there'll be a violent backlash if some cult leader knows how to fan the flame. Hopefully the Bible in your face overcorrection will lead to similar backlash. However given the current consolidation of power and media things are not looking good.
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> Dems need to learn how to take the W quietly instead of rubbing it into R's faces.
Dems didn't campaign on LGBTQ+, GOP did! Dems barely mentioned it during the campaign. GOP knows how to mouth wedge issues loud and wide, it's how we ended up with Moutholini.
Stupidity snowballs (Score:4, Insightful)
> how numerous friends of his became Trump supporters due to the LGBTQ discussions happening in their children's schools... just not popular and it was a major reason that dickbag was re-elected. Even if it seems like the correct moral decision, the unpopularity of it led to a far worse situation.
GOP successfully spooked parents with LGBTQ+ bullshit. They cherry-picked a few bad apples and painted it as common-place. Plus, school content is controlled at the state level, not national, and was thus moot for the election.*
Stupidficial gimmicks worked on US's gullible population, just like 1930's Germany; Don pulled Jedi Clown Tricks. The parents ALSO need more education in critical thinking. Stupidity snowballs. Maybe America is just too dumb to hold a democracy, as too many want a theocracy. Perhaps we can negotiate an amiable split before they drag blue states into their cave.
* An exception may be firing or jailing teachers for merely mentioning LGBTQ+ in the classroom, which should be protected under 1st Amendment and separation clause, but the GOP SCOTUS seems overly bribed by rich evangelicals handing out grift-wrapped RV's. The idea that a non-transgender student will become transgendered by mere mention is dumber than rocks. Idiots!
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Conservatives always have a villain though. Someone who's different that you have to hate. Not all conservatives but a very observable number of them and it's always been the case. If it wasn't this group it'd be another.
Wut? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean electing completely unqualified Religious Nutjobs that do nothing but push 100% religious agendas into Education Leadership positions (from local to federal) is a bad idea when it comes to preparing American kids for the global job market - gosh I'm shocked.
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That doesn't explain school systems like Baltimore.
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Almost like a century or two of treating people as property has led to some negative outcomes. Then you have things like white flight [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] making a bad situation worse
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
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Excuses excuses. That officially ended over a hundred years ago, and numerous well-meaning parties have fallen all over themselves in the last 4-6 decades to rectify this problem. Regardless of all that, such failures have nothing to do with moralizing Christians pushing their modern agenda against public schools. Absolutely nothing. Especially not in a place like Baltimore where they have no power. Kindly address the raised point - that social conservatives are somehow responsible for the failure of s
I'm Not Worried (Score:1)
Our Secretary of Education has promised to body slam illiteracy and suplex low math scores. She promises to be the undertaker of increased enrollment in colleges and the ultimate warrior of school safety. With her extensive background in our educational system and her stone cold attitude, there's no way she won't rock at her job.
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She doesn't know Artificial Intelligence from A1 steak sauce. [1]https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/12/linda-mcmahon-a1-instead-of-ai/83059797007/
US schools have a 76% satisfacton rating (Score:1)
Parents like their kids schools. They leave this for the last sentence before the big bold headline "Bottom Line" :
"The current satisfaction reading [for parents of k-12 students ] is in line with the average of 76% over the 26-year trend ."
Wrong problem (Score:2)
The knowledge is free.
The skilled professionals to persuade the pupil whose civil rights include refusing to learn to absorb it are not.
You can lock a kid in a library but you can't make her think. When ignorance is virtue we have lost.
Re: (Score:2)
It's been coming since Ronald "Facts are stupid things" Reagan became our first president with dementia.
I have 5 kids (Score:2)
And the quality of different schools in the USA varies from school to school. Sure you can spend a literal fortune and send your kid to Westminister in Atlanta Georgia. A place where they banned cell phones over 10 years ago and pay teachers enough to lure tenured university professors to teach highschool. But there are also great public schools all over the USA. As a parent you just have to do your research and move to the right neighbourhood. However many other parents understand this and housing cos
Misleading Statistic (Score:1)
While this reports that 35% of people are satisfied with K-12 education, remember that the front cover of Time Magazine in ~2004 highlighted that ~30% of high school graduates couldn't read or write.
They could - however - reproduce. They have kids now.
It's more likely that 35% of people responding to the poll didn't understand the questions, and that 95% of people are dissatisfied with K-12 education.
Is the dissatisfaction (Score:1)
with public or private education? That's an important distinction.