Education

Education, as a public priority in the United States, covers schools, early learning, colleges, libraries and job training. Americans tend to call it important when a survey lists it, yet very few name it as the country’s most important problem when asked in their own words, which makes the size of the priority depend heavily on how the question is asked. The hard choices inside education are tradeoffs: how much to spend, how to spend it, who controls it, and which stage of learning to fund first.

In plain words: most people care about schools. But “caring about education” can mean wanting more money for teachers, wanting more choice for parents, wanting stricter standards, wanting cheaper college, or wanting a better library. Those are different wishes, and some of them pull against each other. This page explains what the public says, why it is hard to measure, and what the real arguments are. Who actually decides each part is on Education: who decides. What research shows about results is on Education: evidence.

Defined terms

Education as a subject in My Vote Forward uses a few terms in a specific way.

Subject. A broad area of public life that people can rank by importance, such as Education or Economy and Work. A subject is a priority area, not a policy. See Priorities.

Proposal. A specific action with a named authority that could adopt it, a cost, and a funding source, such as “the school board adopts a new reading curriculum for grades K to 3 at a stated cost.” See Proposals.

K-12. Public elementary and secondary schooling, kindergarten through grade 12.

Early learning. Programs before kindergarten, including state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) and federally funded Head Start.

Postsecondary education. Community colleges, universities, and technical and career training after high school.

Per-pupil spending. Spending divided by the number of students enrolled. The Census Bureau’s “current spending” measure excludes most construction and debt costs.

Local control. The principle that elected local bodies, usually school boards, make most decisions about schools. How far it reaches varies by state; see who decides.

Open-ended question. A survey question with no answer list, where the respondent supplies the answer. Closed question. A question with a fixed list of options. See Question design.

Evidence: what the public prioritizes

Education priorities in U.S. national polling look very different depending on the question format, and that difference is itself the main finding.

When people answer in their own words

Gallup’s long-running open-ended question asks, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” In the September 1 to 17, 2026 survey of about 1,000 adults (margin of error plus or minus 4 points), 1% named education.⁠¹ In each month from February through July 2026, education was mentioned by 2%.⁠² Economic problems as a group were named by 31% in September 2026, and “the government/poor leadership” by 30%.⁠¹ Because respondents can give more than one answer, Gallup’s totals add to more than 100% (133% in September 2026).⁠¹

Pew Research Center found the same pattern with a different open-ended question. In a July 6 to 12, 2026 survey of 3,554 adults, including 2,779 registered voters, Pew asked which one issue voters most wanted candidates to talk about. Economic issues as a group were named by 29%; Pew reported only answers at 4% or more, and education was not among them.⁠³

When people are shown a list

Closed questions give a much larger number. In Pew’s January 16 to 21, 2024 policy priorities survey of 5,140 adults, about six in ten adults in every age group rated improving the educational system a top priority for the president and Congress.⁠⁴ In the same survey, 73% rated strengthening the economy a top priority.⁠⁴

Both results can be true at once. A person can believe education is very important and still think something else is the single most urgent national problem this month. The subjects overview explains this measurement problem in general; for education it is unusually large.

Confidence and trust

Public confidence is a separate measure from priority. Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found that 38% of U.S. adults had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education in 2026, down from 42% in 2025 and 57% in 2015, as reported by The 74.⁠⁵ The same report noted Gallup’s measure of confidence in public schools at 27% in 2026.⁠⁵ Low confidence can push a subject up a priority list (something needs fixing) or down it (people doubt more effort will help), and a single number cannot tell which.

Party differences

Americans are divided on who handles education better, and many trust neither side. In Pew’s July 2026 survey, 41% of adults said they agreed more with the Democratic Party on education policy, 32% with the Republican Party, and 25% with neither.⁠³ That one in four answer “neither” is a reminder that the education debate is not a simple two-sided contest.

Why education priority is hard to measure

Education as a priority resists clean measurement for at least five reasons.

Format changes the answer. As shown above, a list produces a majority and an open question produces a sliver. Neither is the “true” number. They answer different questions. See Question design.

The subject is several subjects. Education here includes K-12 schools, early learning, colleges, libraries and training. A parent of a four-year-old, a community college student, and a retiree who relies on the public library may all rank “Education” first for unrelated reasons.

Who is asked matters. Families with school-age children have a direct stake that others may not. A self-selected group of participants can over-represent them, or under-represent them. See Measurement.

Most decisions are local. There were 12,535 independent school district governments in the United States in 2025.⁠⁶ A national priority score says little about any one district, where the real decisions are made. See who decides.

Priority is not a direction. Two people can both rank education first and want opposite things. One wants higher teacher pay through more public spending; another wants public money to follow students to private schools. Counting both as “education” is accurate about attention and silent about policy. That is why My Vote Forward keeps priority separate from opinion on a specific proposal. See Opinions.

The real tradeoffs in education

Education tradeoffs are real because the money, time and attention involved are large but finite.

Scale. Public schools enrolled 49.6 million students in fall 2022, taught by 3.2 million full-time-equivalent teachers.⁠⁷ Public school systems spent $17,619 per pupil in fiscal year 2024, up 6.6% from fiscal year 2023, and total elementary and secondary revenue was $994.9 billion.⁠⁸ The Census Bureau notes these figures are not adjusted for inflation or regional cost differences.⁠⁸

Funding source. In fiscal year 2024, states supplied 45.2% of school revenue, local sources 43.2%, and the federal government 11.6%.⁠⁸ Property taxes made up 63.3% of local revenue.⁠⁸ So a call to spend more on schools is usually, in practice, a call for higher state or local taxes or for cuts elsewhere in a state or local budget. See Tradeoffs.

Spread between states. Per-pupil spending in fiscal year 2024 ranged from $31,918 in New York to $11,060 in Idaho.⁠⁸ These gaps reflect different costs, different tax bases, and different choices, and they are a source of argument in themselves.

Stage of learning. A dollar can go to pre-K, to K-12, to college aid, or to adult training. Research on which stage yields the most is contested; see evidence.

Within K-12. Money for smaller classes competes with money for higher teacher salaries, special education, buildings, transportation, tutoring and technology. Instruction accounted for 58.8% of current spending in fiscal year 2024.⁠⁸

Who controls. More state or federal direction can raise common standards; more local or parental control can increase responsiveness and choice. Each gain costs some of the other.

Competing interpretations

Education debates in the United States contain several serious positions. Each is stated here in the strongest form its supporters would recognize, with claims attributed.

“Funding is the main lever”

Advocates of greater and more equal school funding point to research such as Jackson, Johnson and Persico, who estimated that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending for all twelve years of school led to 0.27 more completed years of education and 7.25% higher wages, with larger effects for children from low-income families.⁠⁹ They argue that funding gaps tied to local property wealth are unfair to children who did not choose where they were born.

“How money is spent matters more than how much”

Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution argues that “how money is spent is more important than how much is spent,” pointing out that real per-pupil spending rose sharply over decades while achievement gaps persisted.⁠¹⁰ Holders of this view favor changes in incentives, teacher evaluation, curriculum or school choice over across-the-board increases. The authors of the funding study reply that a long time trend cannot settle cause and effect because many other things changed at the same time.⁠¹¹ The evidence page sets out this dispute in detail.

“Families should choose”

Supporters of school choice argue that parents, not districts, should decide where public education money goes, through charter schools, vouchers, education savings accounts or tax credit scholarships. Charter school enrollment more than doubled from 1.8 million in fall 2010 to 3.7 million in fall 2021, reaching 7% of public school students.⁠¹² A federal tax credit, applicable to taxable years ending after December 31, 2026, allows up to $1,700 per taxpayer for contributions to scholarship granting organizations in states that elect to participate.⁠¹³ Critics argue that choice programs draw money and engaged families away from district schools and reduce public accountability; supporters reply that district schools are themselves often unaccountable to the families they serve.

“Local control protects communities”

Many Americans, across parties, hold that the people closest to a school should run it. Others argue that local control produces unequal results and that state or federal standards protect students whose local institutions fail them. Federal law itself leans local, as the who decides page shows, but states have taken on much of the funding.

“College is the problem, or college is the answer”

Some argue that higher education is too costly and too often fails to deliver value; others argue that postsecondary credentials are the main path to economic mobility. The 2026 Gallup and Lumina results, as reported by The 74, show confidence in higher education falling among Democrats from 61% in 2025 to 50% in 2026 and at 23% among Republicans in 2026.⁠⁵ Distrust now comes from more than one direction.

International comparison

The OECD reports that U.S. expenditure per student is high by international standards, “especially at tertiary level,” while U.S. teacher salaries are “low compared to similarly educated workers”.⁠¹⁴ Readers draw opposite conclusions from the same facts: some see evidence that the United States spends enough and should spend better; others see evidence that K-12 teachers are underpaid relative to other professions.

Application to this framework

Education, in My Vote Forward, is one subject on a published list. A participant can rank it, and a group result can show how many participants put it near the top. That is all a priority does.

The framework then asks different questions separately:

• Priority. How important is education compared with other subjects? See Priorities.
• Allocation. If a defined, fictional pool of new money existed, how would you divide it? Allocation never reaches money that law already commits. See Tradeoffs.
• Opinion on a proposal. Do you support a specific action, such as a district’s bond measure or a state’s pre-K expansion, with its stated authority, cost and funding? See Proposals and Opinions.

Hypothetical example. In a county pilot, 40% of participants rank Education first. The result does not say whether they want higher teacher pay, more school choice, a new library branch or free community college. If the county’s school board later asks about a specific bond measure, that is a proposal question with its own result, and the earlier priority result is not evidence for or against it.

Because most education decisions are made by thousands of separate districts and fifty states, the framework always points from a priority to the body that actually holds authority. See Jurisdictions and Education: who decides. Combining many people’s rankings into one group ranking raises its own problems, covered in Collective priorities.

Unresolved questions

Education raises open questions that this framework does not answer:

• Should Education be one subject, or should early learning, K-12, higher education and libraries be ranked separately? Splitting adds precision but lengthens the list and changes the results.
• How should a priority result weigh people with children in school against people without? Both pay for schools and both live with the results.
• When a closed-list result and an open-ended result disagree as sharply as they do for education, which should be shown first?
• How should results handle the fact that national, state and district priorities may point in different directions?
• How can a priority tool avoid becoming a proxy fight over school choice or curriculum, which are proposal questions, not priority questions?