By AlaskaWatchman.com

With a new school year now underway in Alaska and across the nation, a record high 63% of Americans now say they are dissatisfied with the state of public education, according to a recent national Gallup poll. The loss of faith in public schools cuts across political divides with 74% of Republican-leaning respondents and 55% of Democratic-leaning respondents saying they are “completely” or “somewhat” dissatisfied.

Gallup predicts the low satisfaction levels may fuel the trend of parents choosing alternative schooling options for their children. This is playing out in Alaska and throughout the nation with a massive growth in correspondence, homeschooling and private school options. Many school districts, in fact, are desperately attempting to keep students through added correspondence/homeschool options.

According to Gallup, just 21% of Republicans say they are “somewhat satisfied,” while 44% of Democrats say the same. Overall, only 36% of Americans are satisfied with the state of U.S. schooling. That matches the all-time low, dating back 24 years.

“Lower satisfaction from Republicans and Republican-leaning independents since Joe Biden became president has driven the overall decline in ratings of the nation’s K-12 education quality,” Gallup reported. “The 25% of Republicans who say they are at least somewhat satisfied with U.S. education is the lowest recorded for the group, five points below the previous low recorded last year and about half of what it was in 2019 and 2020.”

The discrepancies between Democrat and Republican leaning Americans are a stark contrast to responses in 2000, when there was little difference between partisan satisfaction levels.

The Gallup results are based on telephone interviews conducted August 1-23, with a random sample of 1,014 adults, ages 18 and older who live in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

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Record number of Americans dissatisfied with K-12 schooling

Joel Davidson
Joel is Editor-in-Chief of the Alaska Watchman. Joel is an award winning journalist and has been reporting for over 24 years, He is a proud father of 8 children, and lives in Palmer, Alaska.


12 Comments

  • Neil says:

    So with that many people dissatisfied WHAT is tge school district doing to change things? NOTHING! They could care less. Their agenda is more important than your child’s education. Just remember that people when November rolls around and you reelect them same loosers!

    • Marta says:

      Yep. They got your money and they dgaf what you think or have to say about it. They cheat in the elections to keep their players/actors in position and you and I are just bothersome ignorant flies they couldn’t give a sh_t about. I will never give them my children to brainwash and groom.

    • Richard K CORBeil says:

      It’s ONLY 63%, an indication that public education is working, just not as fast as they want. In time that number will diminish and soon after fade away altogether.

  • Proud Alaskan says:

    Please Please take your kids out of these schools now. Before it’s to late and your kids start Disrespecting you as parents and want to be called Sally instead of Johnny.

  • DaveMaxwell says:

    Dunleavy can defund the schools! He doesn’t! Question for him, who are you governor of?

  • John. J Otness says:

    Indoctrination. is not education….

  • Ruth Ewig says:

    It was never correct to create a Department of Education. Ronald Reagan, Bill Bennett, Gary Bauer and others at that time tried to abolish the Dept. of Education unsuccessfully. The “unelected” NEA/AFT teacher union leaders dominate the education system and teachers have to pay forced dues to them. School choice or vouchers would remove their power. They just made another effort to limit parents’ access to state money. It looks like NEA/AFT is the communist party of America! Keep praying and pushing back.

  • Ruth Ewig says:

    It was never correct to create a Department of Education. Ronald Reagan, Bill Bennett, Gary Bauer and others at that time tried to abolish the Dept. of Education unsuccessfully. The “unelected” NEA/AFT teacher union leaders dominate the education system and teachers have to pay forced dues to them. School choice or vouchers would remove their power. They just made another effort to limit parents’ access to state money. It looks like NEA/AFT is the communist party of America!

  • Marta says:

    I wouldn’t care at this point if they fired all the teachers and administrators and closed all the schools. The teachers I’ve met all seem like a combo of a handful of the following: drug addled, addicted, degenerate, sociopaths, mentally ill, corrupt, and simpletons. They really shouldn’t be around children. The principal of Service HS having sex with teachers, having extramarital S&M relationships, and doing and buying/selling drugs while on the job was just swept under the rug. This is just the tip of the ice berg. There probably isn’t any data on how many students suffer from sexual abuse by ASD staff because they sweep it under the rug and do hard cover up campaigns to keep parents and community members in the dark. I choose to NEVER have a person with that level of immorality/degeneracy around my children. The public school paradigm is antiquated in this modern era. Just subsidize childcare for people who need it and close the schools. It would be cheaper.

  • DaveMaxwell says:

    Once again the quiet part said in print and believe out loud
    Why is dunleavy not defunding this evil?

  • Jen says:

    Watch who is leading homeschooling programs and whom are hired. The same public school teachers have been and are looking for greener pastures without dropping their false doctrine and idiotology. Eventually the brick n mortar public school be insufficient to provide jobs for both administrators and staff when the families moved over to private, online, and homeschool choices. Just leaving the public schools isn’t enough. Cause if I was a leftist teacher, I’d see the writing on the wall and gotten myself established at a private school, online/homeschool, or state-run local homeschool program ten years ago.

  • SA says:

    The same Gallup poll cited in this article notes that 76% of parents are satisfied with their own children’s education. So while only 36% of *Americans* are satisfied with American K-12 education, 76% of *parents* are satisfied with their kids’ educational opportunities. This is an important distinction. Because the overwhelming majority of *parents* are satisfied with their direct experience with their children’s schools, the claim that parents are fleeing public schools for homeschooling, private schooling, and/or online learning is not supported by the data. https://news.gallup.com/poll/510401/education-satisfaction-ties-record-low.aspx#:~:text=Satisfaction%20With%20K%2D12%20Education%20in%20Both%20Parties%20at%20or,nation's%20K%2D12%20education%20quality.