Parents Support Core Subjects, Keep Males out of Female Sports

by Jeff Johnston | January 8, 2025 | Education

A new poll from Parents Defending Education (PDE) shows what parents support – and oppose – in key education areas such as boys in girls sports and private spaces, educational freedom, and the need for schools to focus on core subjects.

The poll also looked at parents’ views about gender ideology, “grading for equity” to “address racial disparities in grading,” and schools withholding information from parents.

PDE, founded in 2021, describes itself as “a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas.”

The organization publishes an online “IndoctriNation Map,” where parents and concerned citizens publish information about radical activism in public schools. PDE also identifies parent organizations in each state that oppose extreme ideologies and fight for parental rights in education and students’ privacy and safety.

The survey of 1,000 parents across the country with children 18 years old or younger was conducted for PDE by CRC Research.

Almost three-fourths of the parents (73%) were young, between the ages of 18 and 44, and their responses were generally conservative. It’s clear that parents want quality education for their children, free from ideologies that sexualize and confuse them.

Here are some key findings from the survey:

96% of the parents supported educational freedom, agreeing “that parents should be able to choose the best educational option for their child.”

While 60% said they would keep their children in their current school, 19% of parents said that, given the option, they would move their children to a different school. Another 16% said they would homeschool their children, given the option.

In terms of what schools should teach, 90% of those surveyed said schools should focus “core subject areas, such as math, reading, writing, science and social studies.”

72% of parents somewhat or strongly oppose “‘grading for equity’ to address racial disparities in grading.”

Only 14% of parents thought schools were “good” at “enforcing student behavior policies,” while 58% said schools were “fair” and 36% said they were “poor.” 96% of parents want “clearly stated and enforced expectations when it comes to maintaining order in classrooms.”

80% of the parents surveyed disagreed with schools helping children change their “gender identity” without notifying parents, and 75% oppose school employees “withholding information about a child’s gender identity from parents.” 77% want parents to be informed “if their child wants to use a different name or pronoun at school.”

Parents want sex-segregated sports and private spaces, with 78% opposing males on girls teams and 77% opposing males who “identify as females” in “female bathrooms and locker rooms and vice versa.”

In a statement about the results, PDE president Nicole Neily commented:

These 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.

PDE’s director of Outreach, Erika Sanzi, concluded that parents want to be informed when their child struggles with mental health issues like gender identity:

This poll shows overwhelming opposition to school personnel withholding information from parents about their child’s gender identity at school. …

It’s refreshing to see even more confirmation that people think this ubiquitous trend of facilitating gender transitions behind the backs of parents is complete madness and needs to stop.

If you’re concerned about what your child is being taught in school, check out this updated, free resource from Focus on the Family and Family Policy Alliance: Equipping Parents for Back-to-School.

We want parents to feel confident and equipped to manage issues affecting public – and private and online – schooling. The FREE downloadable resource helps you be aware of what’s going on in your child’s classroom and offers guidance for how to advocate for your child in the school year ahead.

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Focus on the Family Parenting: Thriving Student

Is ‘Critical Race Theory’ Being Taught in Public Schools? CRT Deniers Claim it Isn’t

Is it ‘Book Banning’ to Keep Sexually Explicit Books out of Schools?

Reading and Math Scores Plummeted During Pandemic, New Report Finds

Sexualizing Schoolchildren: Classroom and Library Books

Students’ Test Scores Tank After School Consults ‘Woke Kindergarten’

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