The month of March marks the five-year anniversary of the event that forever changed U.S. K-12 public education: the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate effect of the President’s COVID-19 emergency declaration was that public schools closed their doors and went into lockdown mode. This lockdown produced long-term consequences for K-12 education.
One of these consequences is how dissatisfied Americans are today with public education. From 2019 to 2025, Gallup’s annual public satisfaction survey shows that the percentage of adults who report feeling dissatisfied with K-12 public education increased from 62% to 73%, with those who felt satisfied at the lowest level since 2001.
Another consequence is the learning loss disaster COVID-19 produced for our nation’s young people, especially the most vulnerable. (There also are other negative pandemic-related social and emotional consequences that befall young people.) To be fair, some of the pandemic’s distressing effects result from school closures, while others predate the pandemic but were made worse by it.
