Furious parents give US schools a big, fat F — as approval plunges dramatically

Parents are giving American schools a big, fat F, according to a new survey — with a record low number of people saying they’re satisfied with the quality of education.

Just 32% of adults surveyed by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation said they are “completely” or even “somewhat” satisfied with the US education system this year.

That’s the worst satisfaction schools have received in the 27 years of the survey.

Those dreadful marks also reflect a staggering 11-point drop in satisfaction in just two years, with 43% of US adults saying they were satisfied with the school system in 2024.

It’s an even sharper decline from before the pandemic — when a majority 51% of American adults approved of the K-12 schools in 2019, the poll released Tuesday found.

And approval has been nosediving since then. It slid to 51% in 2020, 46% in 2021, 42% in 2022 and 36% in 2023 before briefly rallying in 2024 and then plummeting again.

Dissatisfaction with schools, meanwhile, has steadily increased in opposite proportion over that time — spiking to a record-high 67% this year and prompting experts to issue stark warnings about the state of education.

“It’s terrifying. We’re on the precipice of the dissolution of the public education system as we have known it,” said Jack Schneider, Center for Education Policy director at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Exactly what is causing the dissatisfaction is unclear but, experts pointed to years of national test score declines as an obvious culprit.

Reading scores have particularly stagnated among American school kids, with a May study from Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford University academics finding just five states in an assessment of 38 had meaningful improvement on tests from 2022 to 2025.

And nationwide, students’ reading scores are about a half-grade level behind where they were before the pandemic, with math scores faring only mildly better.

“We’ve had a drumbeat of bad news about test scores and other social trends that could be driving this,” Michigan State University political science professor Sarah Reckhow said.

Another factor could be politically motivated and trickling down from the White House — where President Trump has been framing classrooms as a battleground for the future of American ideals.

Democrats even appeared to be less satisfied with school systems than others, with satisfaction among them slipping 19 points since Trump took office in 2025. Republicans, meanwhile, dropped 6 points and independents by 10.

And while the majority of American adults on the whole were dissatisfied with schools, parents with kids in the system were far more receptive — with about 66% saying they’re satisfied with the education.

“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 noted.

But that was still the lowest satisfaction in years, with 2013 being the only year parent-satisfaction hovered around two-thirds.

And a Gallup survey also found a mere 20% of adults said US schools were doing an “excellent” or “good” job preparing students to join the workforce.

“People have a general negative vibe about everything in the country right now,” Gallup senior researcher Zach Hrynowski said. “People are frustrated, and don’t think any institution is working particularly well.”