Five years after the COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures reshaped Americans’ perception of public education, parents who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation are relieved at the prospect of a “real restoration of parental rights” under President-elect Donald Trump.
For many parents, the COVID-19 lockdowns opened a window into their children’s schools, making it suddenly apparent that lessons on race, gender and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) were taking precedence over education at a time when test scores were plummeting and students were struggling. Now, with far-left ideology becoming increasingly prevalent and test scores remaining at an all-time low, parents are looking to the incoming Trump Administration to refocus public schools, drive divisive content out of curriculum and equip parents with more rights over their children’s education.
“I believe, and I don’t think a lot of people would disagree, that decisions are best made by those who are closest to the issue,” Cristine Tooien, a mother of three, told the DCNF. “In K-12, that means parents and local school boards, not bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. So my hope is that the federal government will step out, but in tandem, that local parents will step up.”
A recent poll by Parents Defending Education (PDE), which opposes the far-left orthodoxy taking over many schools, found that 90% of parents surveyed believe schools would be greatly improved by simply focusing on the core subjects, such as math, reading, writing, science and social studies. About 52% of parents support making cuts to the Department of Education, with 77% advocating for the department to allow states more flexibility with how they run their school districts.
“This poll shows overwhelming opposition to school personnel withholding information from parents about their child’s gender identity at school,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at PDE, said in a statement. “This matters because the policies propagated by activist groups, the National School Boards Association and teachers’ unions all allow for—and often require—the deliberate deception of parents by school staff if that is what the minor child wants. 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.”
Less than half of parents believe the department is “appropriately using their resources to help advance the education of students across America,” PDE’s poll found. (RELATED: How Democrats Lost The Plot On Education)
Part of the president-elect’s education agenda includes increased parental involvement and the eradication of critical race theory (CRT), gender ideology and DEI initiatives from schools. Trump has promised to return the purpose of schools to education, focusing on reading, writing and math “so that America’s young people have the knowledge, skills, and training they need to get a great job and lead a successful career.”
Tooien said that, like many parents, she became increasingly aware about what was going on inside her children’s schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdowns gave her “the opportunity to observe the way that our local leaders were making decisions,” she said.
“It allowed me a chance to kind of observe that not just COVID requirements, but also curriculum decisions and other policymaking, were being done in a way that didn’t involve, include or respect parents,” Tooien said.
Living near Minneapolis, Minnesota around the time of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent racial protests, Tooien said schools in her area began “very quickly and quietly” passing policies meant “to address racial disparity [and] equity initiatives.”
“You can look at everything from policy to curriculum to professional development, and there was a very quick, hyper accelerated shift toward the time and the money in our school budgets that need to be spent on equity initiatives and things that really have very little to nothing to do with direct instruction or any sort of core academic subjects, and the test scores reflect that,” Tooien told the DCNF.
Lori Gimelshteyn, a mother of two from Colorado, noticed that as her kids’ school began offering more services, such as expanding its healthcare center, its focus began shifting away from its main purpose: education. Not only was the school pushing ideology onto children, she said, but it was happening at the expense of their grades.
Students’ test scores plummeted during the pandemic when the Biden administration’s policies — largely catered toward influential teachers unions’ demands — alongside the state and local policies that followed, kept kids out of schools during their most formative years. Five years later, academic performance has shown little to no improvement, with some indicators revealing worsening scores since the lockdowns.
“Parents … want schools to get back to educating our children,” Gimelshteyn said. “In the state of Colorado, over half of the students are not at grade level of reading. And some school districts you’re looking at proficiency of only 4% in those subject areas, and that’s terrible, and yet graduation rates are the highest they’ve ever been.”
Between fall 2023 and spring 2024, the gap between pre-COVID results for sixth graders in math and English grew by 40% and 31% respectively, and the average eighth grader today requires approximately nine months of additional schooling to reach pre-Covid-19 levels in the two subjects, a July 2024 study by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) found.
While Trump voiced support for reopening schools as early as July 2020, President Joe Biden’s policies allowed schools to remain locked down for months thereafter, with many schools not returning to in-person instruction until the fall of 2021 at the behest of teachers unions.
People attend the Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors national summit at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown on June 30, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)[/caption]
Parents also took issue with the administration’s entrenchment of critical race theory and gender ideology within elementary curriculum.
Gimelshteyn told the DCNF her son was once forced to complete a school project which asked students, “Why is your favorite hobby racist?”
“I said to my son, ‘You’re going to get an F on this paper before you lie,’” Gimelshteyn said. “And he looked at me and he said, ‘Mom, you don’t understand. I have think one way at home and another way at school.’”
“And so I did what every parent should do when there’s a concern, is go to the teacher,” Gimelshteyn continued. “And then I realized that the teacher is not going to resolve it, then I spoke to the principal. Then I went to the school board and district administration. Come to find out the whole entire school was complicit. This isn’t just one rogue teacher, this is an entire administration.”
Under Trump, schools that push “Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content” on children may face legal challenges for civil rights violations and be stripped of federal funding, his platform claims.
On a separate occasion Gimelshteyn’s then-elementary-aged daughter revealed that a female student at her school had changed her name and would begin using the boy’s bathroom. Gimelshteyn then learned that the child’s parents were not informed about these changes and that the school was allowing them behind the parents’ back.
Gimelshteyn was eventually forced to pull her daughter out of public school due to the DEI and gender ideology ingrained in the district, she told the DCNF.
“We have evidence that this has been going on since early 2000, but it really ramped up in 2020 with the election of the Biden-Harris Administration, especially in the push with DEI and social emotional learning and the LGBTQIA+ ideology into the classrooms.” Gimelshteyn said.
Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) poured over $100,000,000 into DEI efforts for K-12 schools, funding projects aimed toward “LGBTQ inclusion” in which “anti-racism and anti-oppression are embedded.” The Department of Agriculture in 2022 also caused an uproar when a new nondiscrimination policy had the potential to withhold federal funding for school lunches if states like Florida that banned males from competing in female sports. (RELATED: America’s Largest DEI Program Is About To Go Up In Flames)
Trump ran his 2024 campaign in part on restoring “the fundamental right of parents to control the education, healthcare, and moral formation of their children.”
The Biden-Harris administration’s policies have increasingly left parents worried about their rights over their children being stripped, especially as stories circulate about parents losing custody for not “affirming” their child’s preferred gender identity.
“[Vice President Kamala] Harris has demonstrated that she is not supportive of parental rights and she is supportive of biological males participating in female athletics, undermining the whole purpose of Title IX,” Gimelshteyn said, emphasizing that the majority of these issues she has found to be nonpartisan.
The Biden Administration in January finally ended its years-long effort to rewrite Title IX, a rule that prevents discrimination against women, to include gender identity. The rewrite would have undermined the entire purpose of the rule, allowing biological men into women’s facilities and sports. (RELATED: Biden Makes Last Ditch Attempt To Throw A Wrench In Trump’s Education Agenda)
Trump has previously criticized Biden for allowing transgender participation in sports and vowed to strike down this initiative and protect female-only spaces.
Under Biden’s leadership, several states like California were able to pass laws preventing schools from requiring parental notification if a child expresses interest in changing their gender, though the law has since faced several legal challenges. Trump has expressed his intent to reinforce parental rights by requiring schools to notify parents of any changes to their child and punishing any state or school that pushes gender ideology on children, according to his platform.
“President Trump will immediately reverse Joe Biden’s barbaric ‘gender-affirming care’ policies, and he will sign an executive order instructing every federal agency, including the Department of Education, to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition, at any age,” his campaign website promises.
“[I’m hoping for a] real restoration of parental rights and recognition of a parent’s right to direct the upbringing and education their child and to have access to school choice and transparency [under Trump’s Administration],” Gimelshteyn said. After Trump’s November victory, Gimelshteyn said she felt like a “sense of relief swept through Colorado.”
“In a state where we have legislative leadership that really is against parental rights, it’s a little scary,” Gimelshteyn told the DCNF. “So we’re just really encouraged,” she added regarding Trump’s return to office.
Biden’s Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, has previously taken aim at the parental rights movement, allegedly soliciting the National School Boards Association to label advocates “domestic terrorists” for addressing their concerns about the politicization of classrooms local school boards. Conservative parent group Moms for Liberty also discovered Biden’s FBI declined to investigate several threats made against the group.
Despite floating the idea of abolishing the department altogether and allowing states greater control over education, Trump nominated former head of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon in November to succeed Cardona. Based on her work as the head of America First Policy Institute (AFPI), McMahon is expected to advocate for school choice, protect female-only spaces and sports and remove DEI from of schools.
Gimelshteyn hopes the administration will investigate the Department of Education’s influence over public schools and allow greater freedom at the state and local levels.
Tooien also hopes to see a “bubble up effect” with K-12 education reform into higher education.
“It does give apparent pause, you know, is that the environment that you would want to be sending your young adult into, and I hope that there will be change,” Tooien said.
“I’m optimistic … everybody is looking at this new administration at the federal level with some optimism that, if we can just stop funding initiatives that are kind of sidetracking, derailing and encouraging mission creep at the local level, I think that would do a world of good for our local decision makers, our school board members, who are really grappling with tough choices when it comes to their budget,” Tooien told the DCNF. “I would love it if the federal government was not constantly trying to entice schools to detract away from the mission of public schools, which is really to just help children reach their full potential academically. So, yeah, I’m optimistic.”
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