Most educators expect student behavior to be a major challenge in the 2026-27 school year, according to an Education Week article.
“Student [mis]behavior has increased significantly over the years,” says a district-level administrator from Georgia. More leaders need the courage to make decisions with “students at the center” to resolve those concerns, she says.
“Student behaviors are constantly changing, and there is no training on how to deal with the extreme disruptions to learning,” says an elementary school principal from Louisiana. “Education is not valued by families as it once was.”
Given a list of 27 options, student behavior is the top concern for the coming year, cited by 75% of more than 1,000 teachers and school and district administrators surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center. Student engagement is next most-pressing concern, identified by 70% of respondents. The top five most common responses all relate directly to students.
Budget uncertainty is the sixth most common challenge, with 42% of respondents expecting it to be a major concern. Student well-being and financial stability are directly connected, according to educators. Staff positions and programs that support positive student behaviors, social-emotional learning, and academic interventions have been eliminated at some schools due to budget restrictions.
Less funding to improve student behaviors comes at a time when 37% of educators surveyed say their students’ behavior got “a lot worse” during the past school year, with 34% reporting it had gotten “a little worse.”
Many educators don’t expect the trend to change in the 2026-27 school year: 22% say they expect behavior to get “a lot worse,” and 28% expect it to get “a little worse.”
Problems controlling behaviors have been trending upward for years. In a 2025 EdWeek Research Center survey, more than half of 5,800 teachers surveyed (58%) said student behavior and classroom management would improve if parents had instructions to teach their children to behave appropriately at school. Tougher consequences for misbehavior would improve student behavior according to 50% of teachers, and 47% called for more support from leaders on discipline issues.
Several factors have caused increases in student misbehavior:
- Social and academic disruption during the pandemic made it harder for some students to resolve conflicts with peers;
- Distractions from cellphones and increasing screen time have decreased attention spans and students’ ability to handle their own emotions;
- Increasing divisiveness among adults has made it harder to find models of positive behavior.
Budget cuts could add to the factors affecting student-behavior concerns.
“We have eliminated an assistant principal position even though we have increased discipline referrals by 1,500 over the past two years,” a high school principal from New York says.
At one elementary school, leaders won’t fill an open position on the school’s climate-support team—which helps mediate student conflicts and encourage positive behavior—after a member took a position at another school.
Education Week
