Establishing a Baseline – How Do School Parents Feel in 2025? 

Understanding parents’ feelings towards K–12 education is paramount to the work we do at EdChoice. In 2024, we conducted monthly waves of nationally representative polls of current school parents via EdChoice’s Public Opinion Tracker, in partnership with Morning Consult. Nearly 15,000 current school parents gave their opinions and perspectives on a variety of education related topics.  

We dug into topics like chronic absenteeism, cell phones, sentiment towards the direction of K–12 education, school choice policies, and many more. To provide a high level view of our polling in 2024, my colleague Alli Aldis penned an excellent summary in December.  

Enter 2025. Calendars start fresh. Schools across the country began a new semester. In December 2024, nearly half of parents (46%) felt K–12 education in our country was on the wrong track. Has the new year impacted their outlook? Has a new presidential administration shifted parents’ attitudes? 

In partnership with Morning Consult, EdChoice surveyed a nationally representative sample of over 1,200 parents from January 13 to January 15, 2025. Parents were asked about their feelings towards universal education savings accounts (ESAs), their awareness of choice policies currently available in their state, potential solutions for improving student outcomes, and much more.  

Those familiar with our Tracker polling series will notice a change in our reporting approach this year. Instead of monthly reports, we will release six reports this year with the schedule below. Each of our reports can be viewed here. Our reports will now provide new information based on two or more survey waves. So, for example, this current release (LINK) includes data and updates from surveys that fielded in December 2024 and January 2025. Additional reports we plan to release are: 

• April – General Public + School Parents, Teachers 
• September – General Public + School Parents 
• October – Teachers 
• November – General Public + School Parents 

With that in mind, let’s dive into some of the findings from our first polling report of 2025: 

In January, the majority of school parents (51%) felt that K–12 education is on the wrong track, a 5-point increase from December 2024. When asked about K–12 education in their state, 47% of school parents say it is on the wrong track. This too represents a 5-point increase from December of 2024. The lone bright spot appears when school parents are asked about their local school district. Only about one in three school parents (34%) say education in their local school district is on the wrong track. Locally, parents feel relatively optimistic, as more than half of parents (52%) feel that education is heading in the right direction. This has been a consistent theme when observing school parents’ sentiment towards education across the three levels. 

School parents believe prioritizing social and emotional learning support and mental health services would help ensure positive student outcomes. Last week, the National Center for Educational Statistics released the results of the 2024 National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP). The results were not good. So, what should we do?  

We asked school parents which types of student-support services should be prioritized in order to ensure positive student outcomes. Perhaps surprisingly, 58% of school parents feel that prioritizing social and emotional learning support would help student outcomes. Mental health services (56%), academic tutoring (52%), and career and vocational guidance (51%) follow closely behind. Lagging behind the other options are mentoring programs (41%).    

We also asked school parents about what motivates students when it comes to academic performance. Parents believe that a student’s personal interest in the subject (76%), support from teachers (75%), and encouragement from parents (74%) are the most effective in motivating students academically. Parents are less likely to say that peer influence (62%) or financial incentives (53%) motivates students’ academic performance.   

We also inquired about possible motivators when it comes to ensuring student attendance. Parents hold similar opinions about potential motivation for attendance as for academic performance. Parental encouragement (79%), personal interest in subjects (77%), and teacher support (75%) are the most effective according to school parents, while peer influence (69%) and financial incentives (55%) are less attractive options for parents.  

More than four in five school parents believe that financial incentives or rewards would have a positive impact on student academic performance and attendance. A strong majority of school parents feel that financial incentives or rewards would have a positive effect on student academic performance (87%) and attendance (85%). Examining the demographic data, a few groups stand out from the rest. More than 90% of Black parents, Hispanic parents, and private school parents believe that financial incentives or rewards would have positive effects on student academic performance and attendance.  

School parents are significantly more likely to support universal education savings accounts (ESAs) over ESAs based on financial need. Nearly three-fourths of school parents (73%) agree that ESAs should be made available to all families regardless of income level. About half of school parents (51%) believe that ESAs should only be available to families based on financial need. School parents consistently favor universal ESAs over needs-based ESAs, with the trend continuing as we begin 2025. This is especially notable given that Tennessee is working to pass a universal ESA program in the final week of January. This new program would be the state’s first universal ESA.  

Nearly three in four school parents support ESAs. When asked with a definition provided, 74% of school parents were supportive of ESAs, while 11% opposed the policy.  We also asked parents about ESAs without providing a definition. Interestingly, 55% of school parents support ESAs, while another 19% said they have never heard of ESAs. Only 9% of school parents opposed ESAs when asked without a definition. We’ve observed this sentiment regarding ESAs from school parents many times before. There remains a healthy chunk of school parents who are not familiar with the policy, but when given a definition, school parents tend to support ESAs rather than oppose them. Among the different demographic groups, school parents (74%) and high-income respondents (74%) were among the groups most likely to support ESAs. Rural respondents are the least likely group to support ESAs at 62%.  

The majority of school parents support school choice policies like open enrollment, charter schools, and school vouchers. When provided with the definition of each policy/school, school parents are much more likely to support open enrollment (73%), charter schools (67%), and school vouchers (65%) rather than oppose them. Even without a definition provided, school parents support for open enrollment (61%), charter schools (58%), and school vouchers (50%) is formidable. Some of the demographic data is notable, especially concerning school vouchers. Conservative respondents (71%), Republicans (68%), and Black adults (65%) are the most supportive of the policy. Interestingly, liberal respondents are towards the bottom of the list when it comes to supporting school vouchers at 51%.  

School parents drastically underestimate spending per pupil in their state’s public schools. School parents estimated that their state’s public schools spend roughly $5,000 per pupil. In reality, the average is more than triple that amount. States, on average, spend $15,591 per pupil in public schools. For context, Utah’s spending in their public schools is $9,496 per pupil, lowest in the nation. That is nearly double what school parents estimate their state is spending.  

We asked school parents whether they feel that public school spending in their state is too low, too high, or about right. This was a split sample question, with one randomly selected group receiving the question without a spending statistic, and the other randomly selected group receiving a question that includes a publicly recorded statistic about their state’s spending.  

Without any data on the matter, the majority of school parents (58%) feel that spending is too low, while 32% of school parents feel that spending is about right. Only 10% of school parents feel that spending is too high. The results were drastically different when parents were asked about spending with a publicly recorded statistic on their state’s public school spending. Only 39% of school parents felt that their state’s spending in public schools was too low, a 19-point difference from the group that did not get any statistic in their question. Parents were much more likely to say their state’s public school spending is about right (38%) or too high (22%).  

The general public and school parents believe teachers should be paid more in 2025. In January, 69% of Americans and 73% of school parents said that public school teacher salaries in their state should increase. We asked teachers the same question in our April Teachers survey, and 92% of teachers favored a salary increase. To provide some context, we also ask our respondents to estimate the average teacher salary in their state’s public schools. Both parents and the general public tend to underestimate their state’s average teacher salary, placing guesses in the realm of $40,000-$44,000. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the mean teacher salary was $66,397 in FY21.  

Parents have mixed opinions on which type of school they prefer for their child. The greatest proportion of school parents (42%) say that they would pick a regular public school to provide their child with the best possible education. However, about one-third of parents (30%) would choose a private school, followed by 14% favoring home school and 9% charter school. Overall, a slim majority of school parents (53%) would choose an option other than public school for their children, if they were given the option to do so.  

School parents are split evenly on whether they want their child’s schooling to happen entirely outside the home. Just over half of parents (53%) want their children to attend school completely outside the home for the full five days each week. One-third of parents (33%) say they’d prefer a schedule that allows their child to learn at home with a parent, teacher, or tutor 1-4 days per week. The remaining 14% of parents want all schooling to take place at home. There’s a clear division in opinions, revealing that many parents want more flexibility in the weekly school schedule.