Texas Public Opinion on K-12 Education
A new report by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University provides Texans’ evaluations of the quality of K-12 public school education in their local independent school district (ISD) and in Texas overall. The report, based on a survey of Texas registered voters conducted between April 22 and May 6, also includes an over-sample of parents of current K-12 students, allowing for an analysis of not only how all Texans view the quality of K-12 education, but also how parents evaluate the general quality of public school education as well as the quality of the specific education being received by their children.
Overall, 15% of Texans rate the quality of K-12 public school education in their ISD as excellent, 41% as good, 22% as only fair, and 9% as poor, with 13% unsure. When focused more broadly at the state level, 10% of Texans rate the quality of K-12 public school education in Texas as excellent, 38% as good, 31% as only fair, and 12% as poor, with 9% unsure.
Dr. Michael O. Adams, Founding Director of the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University, highlighted a significant finding of the study, that “parents of current K-12 students were significantly more likely than non-parents to rate the quality of public education provided by their local ISD and by Texas overall as either excellent or good, just as non-parents were significantly more likely to rate the quality of education provided by both as only fair or poor.”
Close to one-half (44%) of parents of current K-12 students rate the quality of the education provided by their children’s school as excellent and 47% as good, with only 8% rating it as only fair and 1% as poor. Parents of children who attend a private or charter school, or who are home-schooled, are almost twice as likely as parents of children who attend a traditional public school to rate the quality of the education received by their child as excellent.
More than one-half (57%) of parents of current K-12 students are either very familiar (21%) or somewhat familiar (36%) with the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) program, Texas’s new education savings account (ESA) program, which is being implemented for the first time in Texas during the 2026-2027 school year. In contrast, 43% of these parents of current K-12 students are either not too familiar (25%) or not at all (18%) with the TEFA program.
The full report is available on the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center website.
