Under President Joe Biden, it appears the arms of left-wing agendas have extended far beyond government. But a new poll indicates that parents are very alarmed over the indoctrination taking place in classrooms.

Parents Defending Education (PDE) exists to help “reclaim … schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.” On Monday, they released a poll conducted by CRC Research on 1,000 parents, all “with children 18 years old or younger in their household between Dec. 12-18, 2024.” Notably, the poll found that 52% of surveyed parents support “reducing the size and influence of the U.S. Department of Education” (DOE).

Parents were asked: “Do you agree or disagree that parents should be able to choose the best educational option for their child?” In total, 96% of the respondents agreed, with 81% strongly in agreement. Only 3% disagreed in total, with an even smaller 1% who stated they strongly disagreed. Ninety percent agreed that “focusing on core subject areas, such as math, reading, writing, science, and social studies, would improve the quality of public education.” At least 77% said they would be likely to support “a U.S. Department of Education that allows states to have more flexibility on how they run their school districts.” However, only 48% believe the department “is appropriately using their resources to help advance the education of students across America.”

Related to this, PDE also used the survey to draw attention to how parents feel about how the DOE has impacted the programs and curriculum that have been promoted in schools in recent years. Respondents were asked whether they supported or opposed “schools creating student clubs based on race or ethnicity and encouraging students to join them in exploring their racial or ethnic identity and discuss racial issues among members of their own race, making sure that only students of that race are included.” Fifty-six percent opposed this.

Additionally, on the topic of gender politics, 80% disagreed “that schools should help a child change their gender identity, which may include name, pronouns, clothing, chest-binding, or other interventions, without their parents’ notification.” And 74% of the surveyed parents opposed “teachers providing instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary school.”

These results come less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, in which a major part of his campaign was his desire to “end” the DOE. He previously stated that “one … thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington D.C. and sending all education and education work and needs back to the States.” The reasoning for this, he explained, was to allow the states “to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it.”

In that same July statement, Trump argued that when it comes to a poor educational system, “you can’t do worse” than what is currently in place in America. “We spend more money per pupil, by three times, than any other nation. And yet we’re absolutely at the bottom,” he observed. Notably, these comments came before the Biden administration was exposed for putting over $100 million toward promoting DEI in schools. “We’re going to end education coming out of Washington D.C. We’re going to close it up — all those buildings all over the place, and [you have] people that in many cases hate our children. We’re going to send it all back to the States.”

Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon, a senior fellow for Education Studies, explained to The Washington Stand that “parents are very aware that the education of their children is not as rigorous as the schooling they received.” Ultimately, “There are many factors in play, but the sad truth is that the federal experiment with a U.S. Department of Education has been a failure. There is no point in spending more money on this doomed project.”

Kilgannon, who served at the DOE during the first Trump administration, concluded: “Closing the Department of Education and returning that money to the states is a much better approach for the sake of our children and our nation. We live in the greatest country in the world and our children deserve the finest education possible.”