A summer spent watching the rise of AI, tragic school shootings, and bumpy national politics hasn’t engendered confidence in the hearts of America’s teachers.
A September 2025 survey conducted by Morning Consult, in partnership with EdChoice, asked teachers the same question the survey has asked since 2020: “Do you believe that K-12 Education is going well?”
Teachers’ confidence in the American education system’s national direction dipped, with only 26 percent of teachers reporting that they believed education was heading in the right direction. When the survey began in March 2020, teachers reported confidence closer to a 45 percent rate. It’s possible that as COVID-based learning losses remained stubbornly present, as they still do today, teachers lost confidence.
Teachers were more optimistic when they were given the opportunity to predict the future of their hearth and home. 39 percent believed that education in their state was going in the right direction, while 50 percent believed that education in their district was doing well.
It’s understandable that a teacher who is pessimistic about the country’s future might genuinely believe in the efficacy of their own work in their own district. This dynamic is seen elsewhere. For example, research shows that school board members rate their district much higher than local parents rate the district.
However, the fact that only 50 percent of teachers express confidence in the direction of their own district is cause for concern. Teachers represent the best and brightest hopes of our nation’s future. Their pessimism is a call for widespread system reform.
