For the first time in Gallup's long history of measuring public sentiment, American confidence in schools has fallen to its lowest recorded point — a milestone that speaks not merely to frustration with classrooms, but to something deeper in the relationship between citizens and the institutions they once trusted to shape the next generation. The erosion has gathered across years of pandemic disruption, curriculum conflict, and stagnant academic outcomes, arriving now as a collective verdict that the system, as it stands, is not meeting the moment. What lies ahead is less a policy problem than