New Gallup polling and Simba Information’s latest market analysis point to two pressures shaping the same environment: historically weak confidence in national K–12 education and greater scrutiny of what earns a place in district budgets.
Public concern about K–12 education is increasingly difficult to dismiss as background noise.
Gallup’s latest polling found that just 32% of U.S. adults are completely or somewhat satisfied with the quality of K–12 education nationally. That is down 11 percentage points from 2024 and marks the lowest reading in Gallup’s 27-year trend. At the same time, 67% of Americans say they are dissatisfied.
Parents still see their own children’s experiences differently. Among parents with children currently in K–12 schools, 66% say they are satisfied with the education their child receives, roughly twice the share who are satisfied with K–12 education nationally.
But that gap should not be mistaken for stability. The 66% parent-satisfaction figure is also a record low. Parents continue to view their own child’s education more positively than they view the system overall, but confidence has weakened on both measures.
For companies serving schools, those findings matter. They are not, however, a measure of instructional-material purchasing.
The more useful question is: what happens when weak public confidence arrives alongside persistent academic needs, constrained budgets, and a school market becoming more selective about where it spends?
Public opinion tells us how Americans feel about K–12 education. Student achievement data tell us something different: what schools are still working to address.
The 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend results showed improvement among 9-year-olds compared with the post-pandemic 2022 assessment. Average reading and mathematics scores both increased four points. Compared with 2020, however, the picture was mixed. The 2025 reading score was not significantly different from the 2020 result, while mathematics remained four points lower.
Recovery has been weaker among older students. For 13-year-olds, neither reading nor mathematics changed significantly between 2023 and 2025, and scores in both subjects remained below their 2020 levels.
Other research points to similarly uneven progress. A February 2026 NWEA study using assessment results from more than 5 million students across 9,326 U.S. public schools found that about one in three schools had recovered to pre-pandemic achievement levels in either mathematics or reading. Only one in seven had recovered in both subjects.
Those findings do not mean public dissatisfaction is simply a reflection of test scores. Nor do achievement results automatically determine what districts buy. But together, they help explain an environment in which schools remain under pressure to show progress.
Simba Information’s new Publishing for the PreK-12 Market, 2026-2027 finds that U.S. sales of PreK–12 instructional materials grew 1.4% in 2025.
Sales remain positive, but districts are making purchasing decisions in a more constrained environment. Enrollment is declining in many parts of the country, budgets are under pressure, adoption decisions can be delayed, and schools are being asked to address persistent academic needs with limited resources.
That does not mean districts have stopped buying. It means decisions about what earns a place in the budget are becoming more deliberate.
For suppliers, slower market growth changes the conversation. The question is not simply whether a product is new or innovative. District leaders and educators increasingly need to understand what problem it addresses, how it fits into instruction, and what evidence suggests it will make a meaningful difference.
Simba’s research finds educators becoming less patient with products that have not met expectations in the classroom and more interested in concentrating resources on solutions that can demonstrate value.
In some cases, that expectation is becoming more explicit. A small number of districts are experimenting with outcomes-based contracts that connect payment to agreed-upon student-achievement goals. The practice is still emerging rather than widespread, but it reflects a broader change in the purchasing environment.
For the people making these decisions, “value” is not simply a financial calculation.
District leaders have to consider whether a product responds to an actual student or teacher need. Educators have to consider whether it can work within the realities of their classrooms. And both need some way to determine whether the investment is producing the result they expected.
That raises the expectations placed on suppliers. Innovation still matters, but increasingly it has to be accompanied by a clearer case for need, implementation, and evidence of effectiveness.
This more selective purchasing environment is only one part of the larger PreK–12 market picture.
Enrollment is changing. Funding conditions remain uncertain. Adoption schedules are shifting. Product categories are moving at different rates, and states are taking increasingly different approaches to curriculum, technology, and education policy. The report identifies enrollment, budget conditions, policy volatility, and adoption delays among the forces affecting the market outlook.
For suppliers, understanding how those forces interact matters as much as understanding any individual purchasing trend.
Gallup’s findings offer one view of the pressure surrounding K–12 education. Simba’s research identifies a related market signal: districts are becoming more deliberate about where limited resources go and what they expect those investments to accomplish.
The larger question is where those pressures will create risk, reshape demand, and open opportunities across the PreK–12 instructional-materials market.
Where is the U.S. PreK–12 instructional-materials market headed next?
Simba Information’s Publishing for the PreK-12 Market, 2026-2027 provides the broader market analysis behind the trends discussed here.
The report examines market size and forecasts through 2028; performance and outlook across instructional-material categories; enrollment and demographic pressures; federal, state and district funding and policy conditions; curriculum, assessment and technology priorities; competitive and financial performance among leading PreK–12 suppliers; M&A and investment activity; and the structural risks and areas of relative opportunity shaping the market ahead.
For publishers, education technology companies, investors and other organizations serving schools, the report is designed to answer a larger question than this blog can:
Where is demand changing, why is it changing, and what does that mean for the companies competing for a place in district budgets?
Explore and purchase our latest education reports including Publishing for the PreK-12 Market, 2026-2027
Simba Information continues to track these developments across the education and instructional technology landscape through our Education Market Advisor newsletter. Request access today.
About the Author
Martha Scharping is Senior Education Analyst and Content Strategist at Simba Information, where she leads coverage of K–12, higher education, and workforce-aligned learning markets. She brings prior experience as an educator into her analysis, grounding market intelligence and policy signals in firsthand classroom and instructional practice. Her work integrates market data, policy analysis, and teaching-informed insight to translate system-level shifts, including AI adoption, credential evolution, and work-based learning expansion, into clear strategic guidance for education publishers, EdTech companies, and institutional leaders. She focuses on how trends reshape incentives, operating models, and measurable outcomes over time.