A majority of U.S. parents support “reducing the size and influence of the U.S. Department of Education,” according to polling released on Monday by Parents Defending Education (PDE). 

PDE, which describes itself as a grassroots organization “working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas,” found that 52 percent of parents back scaling back the Department of Education. Forty-five percent oppose doing so, while three percent are unsure. 

Republican parents (67 percent) and independent parents (53 percent) are more likely than Democrat parents (29 percent) to support reducing the size and influence of the department, the survey found.

By ethnicity, a majority of every group besides black parents (37 percent) supports scaling back the Department of Education.

The survey comes ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20 and after he repeatedly promised on the campaign trail to abolish the Department of Education (which was established 45 years ago under President Jimmy Carter) and send power back to individual states and communities.

In August 2023,during an X Spaces interview with Elon Musk, Trump pointed out that U.S. education scores are tumbling compared to other developed countries, even though the United States spends “more per pupil than any other country in the world.” 

“I want to close the Department of Education — move education back to the states…” Trump told Musk, Tesla CEO and X/Twitter owner.

In July 2024, Trump said:

And one other 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. We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse. We spend more money per pupil, by three times, than any other nation. And yet we’re absolutely at the bottom. We’re one of the worst. So you can’t do worse. 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.

The PDE survey also found that 77 percent of parents support “a U.S. Department of Education that allows states to have more flexibility on how they run their school districts.”

That sentiment is backed by a strong majority of parents of all political affiliations, including 85 percent of Republican parents, 77 percent of independent parents, and 67 percent of Democrat parents.

Parents are closely divided on how the Department of Education is using its resources. Forty-eight percent of parents agree and 50 percent disagree that the department is “appropriately using their resources to help advance the education of students across America.”

Democrat parents are the only ones (68 percent) who agree, while only 38 percent of Republican parents feel the same way, followed by 48 percent of independent parents.

One thing parents overwhelming agree on is that “focusing on core subject areas, such as math, reading, writing, science and social studies, would improve the quality of public education.” Ninety percent of U.S. parents polled say they agree with the above statement, including 92 percent of Republican parents, 88 percent of independent parents, and 91 percent of Democrat parents.

That finding comes after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, drew attention to figures from PDE showing how the Department of Education spent $1 billion on promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in schools.

The breakdown from the PDE reveals that in total, from 2021 to the present, $1,002,522,304.81 in grant money has been awarded.

According to DOGE, $489,883,797 was spent on what it described as “race-based hiring.” Another $343,337,286 was spent on “DEI programming,” and another $169,301,221 was used on “DEI mental health initiatives.”

Nicole Neily, president of PDE, said in a statement that the poll results “highlight that parents are dissatisfied with a number of elements of the modern American education system – and that there is broad-based consensus that it’s time for schools to get back to basics.”

“For far too long, federal bureaucrats have sacrificed the needs of students and families in order to appease unions’ and activists’ insatiable demands for money and power,” Neily added. “January 20th can’t come soon enough.”

The survey was conducted by CRC research with 1,000 parents with children 18 years old or younger in their household between Dec. 12-18, 2024. The margin of error is ±3.10 percentage points.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.