Trust in teachers is plunging amid a culture war in education

Americans are losing faith in their schoolteachers.

New polling suggests that fierce debates over what educators should be allowed to do and say in classrooms, an ascendant parents’ rights movement seeking control of what children learn at school, recent criticism of teachers from conservative lawmakers and news outlets and the lingering aftershocks from the pandemic have all sapped public confidence in the teaching profession.

In January, a Gallup poll found that Americans’ belief in grade-school teachers’ honesty had dropped to an all-time low, with 64 percent of adults reporting they believe those instructors are truthful and have ethical standards, down from a high of 75 percent in 2020, during the tensest days of the pandemic. In July, another Gallup poll found that just 28 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in public schools — the second-lowest this figure has been since Gallup began asking this question in 1973. Both polls found divisions along party lines, with Republicans more likely than Democrats to distrust teachers and schools. Seventy-three percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning individuals gave high honesty and ethics ratings to grade-school teachers, but 54 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning individuals did (a steep drop from pre-pandemic times, when 70 percent of Republicans said they trusted teachers). And a mere 13 percent of Republicans said they had confidence in public schools, compared with 43 percent of Democrats.