Takeaways From the New Gallup K-12 Panel: Voices of Gen Z Study

In 2013 Gallup released a study that sent shock waves through the K-12 community:

The Gallup Student Poll surveyed nearly 500,000 students in grades five through 12 from more than 1,700 public schools in 37 states in 2012. We found that nearly eight in 10 elementary students who participated in the poll are engaged with school. By middle school that falls to about six in 10 students. And by high school, only four in 10 students qualify as engaged.

Gallup research strongly suggests that the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become.

Image via Scott McLeod's Dangerously Irrelevant Blog

I’ve shared these results before on this blog, and they’ve been widely discussed at schools, conferences, board meetings, and everywhere in-between.

These 2013 results are from the fourth annual administration of the Gallup Student Poll. Schools opt to participate in the poll to measure the hope, engagement, and well-being of their students in grades five through 12. Gallup measures these three constructs because our research shows these metrics account for one-third of the variance of student success. Yet schools don't measure these things. Hope, for example, is a better predictor of student success than SAT scores, ACT scores, or grade point average.

I was really interested in what the 2024 results would look like in comparison, only to find out there was a different sample size (smaller), different questions (bummer), and different age grouping (which makes sense and I’ll share more below).

The 2024 Gallup Results: Voices of Gen Z Study

For those of you, like me, who often want the TL;DR version (Too Long, Didn’t Read). Here is the summary Gallup shares at the end of their latest results:

The extent to which Gen Z K-12 students feel hopeful about and prepared for their future is linked to how engaged they feel in the classroom. Unfortunately, fewer than two in 10 students strongly agree that what they are learning in class feels important, interesting, challenging or aligned with their natural talents. This disconnect is especially high among students who do not want to attend college, and previous Gallup research finds that engagement declines as students advance along their K-12 journeys.

Gen Z students suggest several strategies teachers and schools could use that might help increase their engagement: Learning from teachers who are themselves highly engaged with the material and finding opportunities to apply what they are learning in a hands-on, relevant way are two such strategies. Finding ways to implement these and other strategies for all students, including those who do not plan to pursue further education after high school, might not only increase student engagement in the present but also better prepare those students for success in adulthood.

Lots of big claims, and it seems as if engagement is still an issue (which we could expect given the previous year’s responses).

This would be Insight #1: Engagement is still as big an issue as it was in 2013.

Yet, when we dig into some of the responses, there are three other insights I’d like to examine.

Insight #2: Teachers Are Doing Their Part

Yes, we can look at the graph and maybe be pessimistic about some areas of school, and the divide between perceptions of students who want to go to college vs those who want to pursue another career path.

But, look at the teachers. A large majority of students have a teacher who is getting them excited about their future, who has told students they are doing good work, and who is encouraging students to pursue their goals and dreams.

The schoolwork may be boring and uninteresting, but the teachers are doing a great job at building relationships, and helping students in ways only a human could do.

We can also see from this graph above that the majority of learning experiences in school are not topics kids are excited about, and technology is not making them more engaged.

Insight #3: Curriculum Is Not Helping

Teachers and staff face an uphill battle to try and engage students who are struggling to connect with schoolwork and curricula.

What would it take to get Gen Z more engaged in the classroom? According to the students themselves, the teacher plays a big role: Six in 10 say that when they are most excited about or interested in what they are learning, it is because their teacher made the material interesting and exciting for them. The same percentage mention that the subject matter was something they wanted to learn more about. Nearly half of Gen Z K-12 students (46%) also say opportunities to engage with the material in a hands-on way drive their interest, and about one in three (35%) most enjoy what they are learning when they can connect it to the real world.

Insight #4: What Happened to All The Respondents?

The 2013 Gallup study was looking at the results of 500,000 respondents. The 2024 version doesn’t even compare:

The online survey was conducted April 26-May 9, 2024, with 4,157 12- to 27-year-old children and young adults, including 2,317 who are enrolled in a K-12 school, using the probability-based Gallup Panel. This is the latest in the Voices of Gen Z study, a multiyear research effort to understand the educational and life experiences of this generation.

Of course, the multi-year effort has more input, but for these results to be based on such a small percentage of the 2013 results, leaves a lot to be uncovered.

Final Thoughts

While these polls and results are always an interesting look into what is happening around the country, they do leave a lot to be desired.

The headlines will focus on how K-12 Schools Struggle to Engage Gen Z Students, but it seems from this small sampling that the adults working in those schools are trying their best given the constraints of a system and curriculum that most kids don’t connect or relate to (at least in the age groups this study looked at).

Maybe the biggest insight I had when looking at the Gallup polls on engagement over the years, is that not much has changed. Before cellphones took over schools (engagement a similar level), after 1:1 initiatives and technology infused into the curriculum (engagement a similar level), pre-pandemic and post-pandemic (engagement a similar level).

In the midst of all that has happened, engagement levels have held steadfast.

In my next article, we’ll be digging into the outliers: those places that have high levels of student engagement even in these circumstances. Stay tuned!