Beyond Enrollment What Parents Really Want from Their Children’s Education

Parents play a pivotal role in their children’s educational journeys, serving as advocates, supporters, and partners in learning. Their insights offer an important window into the day-to-day realities of schooling and its impact on children. Understanding their opinions and desires has been a central motivation for our Schooling in America series since we started it over a decade ago.  

Last April, EdChoice commissioned and developed a nationally representative survey conducted by Braun Research and surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,319 parents with children currently in K–12 school. Since we began this survey work over a decade ago, we have consistently asked a core set of questions about general perspectives and preferences about K–12 education. Tracking these responses year over year allows us to observe how opinions and experiences evolve over time. Here are some of the top findings across parental satisfaction, preferences, and views on the state of K–12 education. 

Satisfaction 

Parents generally have a positive view of their child’s schooling experiences, with most parents in our survey indicating they are “somewhat” or “very satisfied” with their children’s school regardless of type. That said, satisfaction levels differ somewhat based on the type of school.  

Public district school parents are the most likely to say they are “somewhat” or “very dissatisfied” with their children’s schooling experiences, with 32% giving one of those responses. By contrast, only 20% of homeschooling parents said they were somewhat or very dissatisfied. Private school parents are the most likely to state they are “very satisfied” at 45%. 

Preferences 

Satisfaction levels reflect past experiences, but they don’t necessarily represent what people want. To get closer to what parents want from their children’s schooling experiences, we asked what school type they would like to choose for their child, if it were up to them.  

Forty percent of parents indicated that they would most prefer a public district school, roughly half the share of children who, in fact, attend public district schools. Notably, a quarter (25%) of these parents who prefer public schools specifically indicated that they would like to send their child to a public school outside of their assigned school district. The most popular schooling option was private schooling, with over a third of parents (36%) stating they would most like to enroll their children that way. This is four times the rate of students enrolled in private schools (9%).  

Similarly, 14% of parents indicated they would like to homeschool their children, while nearly 5% of children are currently homeschooled. Charter schools were the only school type where current enrollment is somewhat comparable to stated preferences, as the 10% of parents who prefer charter schools is only three percentage points higher than the share of K–12 students (7%) who are in charter schools. 

To get an even closer perspective on what parents are looking for from K–12 education, we presented them with 14 reasons a parent might choose a school type for their child and asked them to identify the top three factors that influenced their own decision. For public district school parents, the top three factors were location/close to home or work (44%), socialization/peers/other kids (34%), and their assigned district/neighborhood school (31%). In contrast, charter school parents prioritized a safe environment (37%), academic quality or reputation (36%), and morals/character/values instruction (23%).  

The priorities of private school parents resembled those of charter school parents, with safe environment (36%), academic quality or reputation (36%), and morals/character/values instruction (31%) being their top three factors. Notably, 20% of private school parents valued individual/one-on-one attention significantly higher than other groups.  

Homeschool parents stood out by making a safe environment (53%) the overwhelmingly most important factor, followed by individualized attention (38%) and morals or values instruction (30%). This group placed less emphasis on socialization (15%) compared to other school types. The data suggests that while safety and academic quality are important considerations for all groups, other factors, such as location, socialization, and individual attention, carry varying degrees of importance, depending on the school type chosen by parents. 

State of K–12 Education 

2024 marks the 12th year we have asked parents whether they feel K–12 education in the United States is on the right track or the wrong track. Parents were more pessimistic this year than they have been in any other year. Nearly two-thirds of current school parents (64%) thought K–12 education is on the wrong track, an eight-point jump from 2023 and a 12-point increase from 2022. Likewise, the share of parents who said K–12 education is heading in the right direction decreased in each of the last two years, sitting at 34% in 2024.  

There appears to be a slight relationship between the type of school a parent’s child attends and their general perspective on K–12 education. Homeschooling parents were more pessimistic than any group, with more than three-quarters of them (77%) saying education was on the wrong track. Their private school counterparts were the most optimistic, constituting the only group that thought education is on the right track (55%) rather than the wrong track (45%). Among parents of public school students, district school parents were more pessimistic (66%) than charter school parents (55%).  

For more about how parents and the general public view K–12 education and its current pressing issues, check out our 2024 Schooling in America dashboard and report. For more “finger on the pulse” polling, take a look at our monthly public opinion tracker with Morning Consult.