Americans are deeply unsatisfied with public education, poll shows

Independent

05-02-2025

Almost three quarters of U.S. citizens say they are dissatisfied with the state of public education, according to a new poll.
Just 24 percent of respondents to Gallup's latest Mood of the Nation survey expressed satisfaction with the nation's schooling while 73 percent said they were dissatisfied, the lowest score since the research was first conducted in 2001.
The poll found a sharp distinction between Republicans and Democrats, with just 16 percent of conservatives backing public education, compared to 30 percent of left-leaning people surveyed.
The findings come as Donald Trump continues to toy with the idea of issuing an executive order demanding the complete closure of the Department of Education (DOE), already the smallest of all cabinet agencies by employee numbers and with an allocation for the 2024 fiscal year of just $238bn, less than two percent of the total federal budget.
The president first touted the possibility of closing down the DOE on the campaign trail and the proposal was also made in the Heritage Foundation 's controversial Project 2025 manifesto for his administration, which Trump has vainly attempted to distance himself from.
Founded by the late Jimmy Carter in 1979, the DOE is now run by 'people that hate our children', according to Trump, who has accused it of being ineffective and attempting to indoctrinate young people with 'woke' and 'anti-American' ideologies pertaining to race and gender via the curriculum.
'We're ranked number 40 out of 40 schools, right?' he said at the White House on Tuesday while discussing the federal agency.
'We're ranked number one in cost per pupil, so we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we're ranked at the bottom of the list.
'We're ranked very badly. And what I want to do is let the states run schools.'
He has nominated former WWE boss Linda McMahon as Education Secretary (although she has yet to have her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate) and added that he wants her to 'put herself out of a job.'
Trump would require congressional approval to shut down the DOE outright (a remote possibility as things stand) but he and ally Elon Musk, who leads the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have reportedly already drafted an order that nevertheless instructs the department to begin reining in its activities, following up on their order to stand down staff hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Most of the DOE's key functions – like supplying grants for low-income students, providing guidance for students with disabilities, enforcing civil rights law and managing the federal student loan program – are codified in the law that first established it.
But even without securing sufficient support on Capitol Hill for its total abolition, Trump could greatly diminish the department by shifting its responsibilities to other agencies, cutting its funding and staff numbers and by axing key programs.