The past 18 months have seen a significant number of health issues, perhaps crises, arise in America. Measles, cyclosporiasis, whooping cough, and more have all been in the news. RFK Jr. is either stroking his pet conspiracy theories alongside Trump, or else he’s completely out to lunch. In the meantime, Kennedy is also continuing to sow doubts about vaccines generally, while also trying to claim he’s not, which helped result in a Trump executive order to reduce vaccination schedule recommendations for children. It’s as though this administration saw before it a four alarm fire and asked out loud, “How can we make this worse?”
And worse is likely to happen, because, despite all of this, the vaccination rates in American school children continues to fall.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday released data on the vaccination rates of US kindergarteners in the 2025–2026 school year, revealing that rates have once again decreased from the previous school year.
Vaccination rates have been slipping since the 2019–2020 school year, when the US had obtained rates of around 95 percent, the threshold needed to keep outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading in communities. The latest data shows the US is moving further away from that target.
Nationally, only 92.4 percent of kindergartners were vaccinated with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the 2025–2026 school year, down from 92.5 percent last year. Coverage with the DTaP vaccine, which covers diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (whooping cough), similarly fell from 92.1 percent to 92.0 percent.
This is bad quite generally, but it’s not equally bad in every state. And it’s very easy to demonstrate that state and local policies when it comes to vaccine requirements for school and the availability for non-religious exemptions are having quite the effect. This data is partially from the last school year, for instance, but it does a nice job highlighting the differences between states. In California, where exemptions face relatively tight requirements, 95.7% of kindergartners had the MMR vaccinations. In Florida, where the DeSantis administration has attempted to end all vaccination requirements for public schools, 88.9% of kindergartners had their MMR vaccinations.
The messaging from state and local leaders matters. The same is true for federal leaders. Public and health policy matter. And when we fall below herd immunity vaccination levels, the consequences are, well, precisely what we’re seeing out in the American wild at the moment.
If the overall number of exemptions exceeds 5 percent in any given location, it means that the location will not be able to achieve the 95 percent coverage target. Currently, 24 states have exemption rates at or above 5 percent. That’s up from 14 states in the 2023–2024 school year.
The data lands as vaccine-preventable diseases continue to rise and spread in the US. The country is on the verge of losing its measles elimination status as cases have reached a 34-year high and are still ticking upward. Last week, President Trump and Kennedy continued their efforts to undermine childhood vaccines, announcing an executive order to reduce the number of recommended vaccinations. The order has no scientific basis, and at a White House signing event, Trump and Kennedy spread vaccine falsehoods, misinformation, and disinformation.
This will get worse before it gets better, in other words. And the only real question is how many people have to get sick and/or die before we correct course.