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‘No Politics’ Classical School Opened By Conservative School Board Rocks Colorado Tests


By: Joy Pullmann | September 09, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/09/09/no-politics-classical-school-opened-by-conservative-school-board-rocks-colorado-tests/

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Aclassical charter school that was preserved after Republican-backed candidates took over the local school board just posted the top state test scores in the district. Students at Merit Academy, a 3-year-old K-11 public school that opens its 12th grade in 2025, also posted the best scores among the four districts that families in the Woodland Park exurb of Colorado Springs can choose from under open enrollment.

While test scores scratch the surface of student and school academic quality, these do help vindicate Teller County parents dissatisfied with extended school lockdowns, an increase in screen-based schooling, and creeping politicization of taxpayer-provided education. Due to these frustrations, this group of parents started a new public classical school in 2021 and took over their school board that fall to keep Merit open and growing. Merit nearly doubled in size the year after that. Charter schools are public schools run by independent boards that can be closed if students perform poorly.

The Denver Gazette offers a data visualization tool for state English and math tests. It shows Merit Academy’s top standing in the Woodland Park Re-2 district on both measures of academic performance.

The below graph that Merit Academy Headmaster Gwynne Pekron sent to parents, teachers, and staff last week shows the classical school’s test scores at No. 1 compared to the Woodland Park School District, Manitou Springs, Park County, Colorado Springs Early College, and Colorado Springs District 11.

The state scores for the last school year, 2023-24, came out for specific schools and districts on Aug. 29. Like their counterparts across the United States, Colorado children are still struggling to overcome lockdown-caused learning declines. This year, some grade levels of Colorado children performed as well as the same grade level in 2019, but many average results remained below pre-lockdown levels.

High schoolers have particularly shown less recovery of lockdown losses than younger students. Math scores are especially abysmal. Here are two graphs illustrating Colorado high schoolers’ PSAT results, from Colorado Public Radio.

Merit’s high schoolers — it had no eleventh grade in 2024 — also outperformed these state averages on the PSAT, a college entrance prep exam.

Image by Joy Pullmann using Colorado data.

“We are extremely proud of these results and the work they represent, but aren’t done striving for improvement by a long shot,” Merit Academy founding board member John Dill told The Federalist.

In 2023, teachers unions vociferously targeted the Woodland Park school board and managed to narrow its conservative majority. The contest gained hostile national media coverage from activists at NBC who support showing children transgender pornography. The local city council is attempting to remove approximately 10 percent of the district’s income and the police were called on a board member’s wife after conservatives decided to contest and win school board posts for the first time in 16 years.

The school board majority has publicly pledged support for high student achievement and parent choice at all Woodland Park schools, and points to Merit as an example of the effectiveness of their leadership on behalf of all local taxpayers and students. In the last three years, the board has raised teacher pay 16 percent and instituted performance-based raises.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist. Her new book with Regnery is “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America.” A happy wife and the mother of six children, her ebooks include “Classic Books For Young Children,” and “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media including Tucker Carlson, CNN, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Joy is also the cofounder of a high-performing Christian classical school and the author and coauthor of classical curricula. Her traditionally published books also include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

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Report: Public Schools Pick Teachers Based On Their Allegiance To Cultural Marxism


BY: REBEKA ZELJKO | SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/14/report-public-schools-pick-teachers-based-on-their-allegiance-to-cultural-marxism/

Kids working on homework

Public schools across the country are using politically one-sided questions to ideologically screen potential teachers, according to a survey of nearly 70 public schools by the National Opportunity Project (NOP). Instead of merely selecting the most qualified candidates, these discriminatory hiring practices evaluate would-be teachers by their alignment with so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) goals.

Documents obtained by NOP show public schools advertised ideological requirements in their job postings with coded language seeking “equity-literate educator[s]” who will work at “dismantling systemic racism” with a “commitment to social justice.” Denver Public Schools dictated that applicants should “have an anti-racist mindset and will work to dismantle systems of oppression and inequity in our community.”

These standards invite educators of a particular ideological affiliation to pursue jobs in public schools while deterring other candidates. “They position teachers as soldiers who share responsibility for upending societal barriers,” the report noted. “Their message to applicants is clear: Be prepared to join our crusade, or don’t apply.”

Kristen Williamson, communications director at the National Opportunity Project, told The Federalist schools are “possibly breaking the law” by ideologically filtering potential teachers.

The vetting continues in the interview process, in which candidates may be asked “loaded and presumptive” questions. Some of the questions NOP uncovered asked applicants how they would lead conversations about race in the classroom and incorporate unscientific fads like “gender diversity.”

“Perspectives that diverge from or fail to mesh with the district’s views on equity” are “judged poorly,” NOP concluded.

According to a Fairfax County Public Schools screening rubric, an “outstanding candidate” is someone who “provides concrete examples of strategies of their commitment to serve to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and understands “their role in breaking down barriers.”

One prompt from City Schools of Decatur in Georgia asks how applicants would shut down parents who object to their racially divisive curricula:

An upset parent emails you regarding a classroom discussion with your students about Critical Race Theory. They accuse you (the teacher) of anti-Americanism, changing ‘real history,’ and of making White children feel marginalized and attacked. Please discuss your course of action and draft a response to this parent.

The hiring team then must ensure “that there is at least one person of color and one woman or gender-fluid person” involved in scoring the response. NOP uncovered several other identity quotes for hiring panels and committees like this one.

“The effect of these policies is that teachers in many of the country’s K-12 schools are selected partly based on subjective, quasi-political, and sometimes illegal criteria that have nothing to do with reading, writing, and math,” Williamson said, noting that these teachers are “handpicked based at least in part on their acceptance and evangelism of one side’s political and social orthodoxy.”

Sometimes applicants aren’t just filtered by their beliefs, but by their physical characteristics. Hinsdale Township High School District 86 in Illinois insists that employees reflect the student body in terms of “race, cultural background, linguistic skill, physical abilities, and disabilities, sex, and sexual identity.”

“Parents and taxpayers must hold school districts accountable regarding teacher hiring standards,” Williamson said. “Ultimately, these same teachers are recruited to be partisan political activists for teachers unions, forcing policies they teach in the classroom on the rest of the country through strikes, lobbying, and electioneering.”

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Extremist Left Claims Only Nazis Want To Teach Children Grammar And Patriotism


BY: JOY PULLMANN | JUNE 12, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/12/extremist-left-claims-only-nazis-want-to-teach-children-grammar-and-patriotism/

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The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss is at it again: amplifying far-left partisans in their war on quality education for American kids. On June 8, she wrote about a report claiming schools that use a classics-based curriculum are vanguards of “right-wing Christian nationalism.”

Schools that emphasize personal virtue, English grammar, classic literature, patriotism, original source-based history, traditional and rigorous math and science, and classical artistic training are “designed to attract Christian nationalists with specific imagery and curriculum,” Strauss slanderously claims. I’m not making this up: She and the report claim the American colors of “red, white, and blue” and pictures of the American founders are racist dog whistles.

Such imagery on the schools’ websites is “designed to attract White conservative families,” Strauss says, citing the report. The implicit bigotry is appalling — assuming some people wouldn’t be interested in patriotic ideas simply because of their skin color. Who’s the racist: people who think American patriotism has a skin color or people who don’t?

Strauss and the report she’s citing also attack schools that promote virtuous behavior to their students, because “values” and “virtues” “stand as shorthand for quoted scripture.” We can’t have kids learning about the deep religious beliefs that created their unprecedented equality, liberty, and opportunity, now, could we? That would be horrible! They might, you know, shovel driveways for the elderly, stay faithful to their spouses, and donate their time and money to charity!

According to these anti-American, anti-Christian partisans, who clearly reject the founding American statesmen’s views about the purpose of public education, there’s absolutely no room for teaching children virtue, morality, or religion in public schools. What an interesting message to Christian parents from the people who control public education.

The report makes sure to target highly successful networks of classical schools, including those run by parents trained at and given free curriculum from Hillsdale College (my alma mater), the Great Hearts Academies, and Liberty Common in Fort Collins, Colorado, a model for many other classical schools. Strauss paints it as nefarious that a guy who wrote in The Federalist noticed such schools exist for the “purpose of forming young minds,” as if every single school in existence doesn’t form the minds who enter.

What she really means is that only the left should be allowed to shape people’s minds. That’s what this report and article are really about: boxing out of public education anyone who doesn’t think exactly like politically extremist teachers union leaders do.

This is another illustration of the reality that today’s left doesn’t believe in sharing the public square, public funds, or anything else with people who don’t parrot their views. This is why leftist-run schools don’t educate, they indoctrinate: You can’t educate without conversation.

Monologues are not conversation. Conversation is not shouting down ideas, banning them, or slandering them. That’s why suddenly conservatives are the only ones who believe in free speech, honoring our country’s fathers and mothers, and educating without indoctrinating: The left has abandoned these common goods in the pursuit of political power.

This report is the work product of the Network for Public Education (NPE), founded by Diane Ravitch, who used to believe in educating kids about their American heritage with original source documents. I’d bet you her U.S. history book is on the shelf in many of the schools this report targets because it is in my kids’ Christian classical school.

But Ravitch has subjugated herself to leftist ideology as she’s become more professionally dependent on corrupt teachers unions. She now seeks to foist a similar intellectual degradation on innocent kids. It’s a shame.

Given this connection, it’s no surprise NPE is financially, ideologically, and professionally connected to the nation’s largest teachers unions, which are gigantic, far-left political operations. The Chicago Teachers Union gave NPE and its political action fund, Network for Public Education Action, a series of grants that look like a startup endowment, according to CTU’s own website and its tax forms. From 2014 to 2016, the union’s foundation gave NPE $265,000, according to its tax forms.

CTU is a large affiliate of the massive national American Federation of Teachers union. It is notorious for extremist behavior, including shutting down Chicago schools in 2022 in defiance of elected officials’ decision to restart school post-Covid.

CTU takes in $32 million a year, and the AFT takes in more than $200 million a year, according to their public tax forms. CTU has something like $60 million in assets, and AFT has $140 million. Each has multiple other arms that also rake in millions each, as well as functioning as distributing houses for all the public money they collect.

The NEA, by the way, takes in $600 million a year, and has more than $450 million in assets, according to its tax records. Teachers unions are essentially giant political money laundering operations and among the top donors to the Democrat Party.

NPE says it has also received money more recently from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which Peter Cook says received more than $1.3 million from unions between 2011 and 2019, according to their disclosures to the U.S. Department of Labor. Schott itself discloses AFT and National Education Association union funding on its website.

Like teacher’s unions, which strongly support political extremism such as teaching small children about gay sex and hiding kids’ gender struggles from their parents, NPE is an ideologically far-left organization. A conference attendee noted the organization considered canceling or moving its 2016 conference in North Carolina after the state passed a law requiring men to stay out of women’s bathrooms. The report’s retired journalist coauthor is a longtime school choice opponent and teachers union mouthpiece.

So, it’s quite rich for an organization connected to some of the biggest leftist political organizing operations in the United States to complain about politics in public education. What they’re really complaining about is competition, which is gaining steam because of how badly these far-left union activists are mangling public schools.

Union money goes all across the country to target any education innovations that threaten their control of the system. Classical schools are one of those threats.

Lots of parents aren’t happy with the current results of unions’ giant political influence operations masquerading as public education. Instead of responding to parents’ concerns about the lack of quality in their kids’ schools and the proliferation of extremist politics, the interest groups making billions off public education belittle concerned parents as Nazis. (Obviously, “white Christian nationalism” is to them a synonym for “Nazi,” a deeply offensive slander that is somehow OK for the left to throw at anyone who disagrees with their politics.)

“[T]he classical/right-wing sector is rapidly growing. Forty-seven percent of the schools we identified opened since the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017,” the report says. It includes zero reflection about how the rise in leftist extremism since Trump’s tenure may have contributed to this rapid exodus of parents from conventional public schools.

If more parents get better schools that don’t happen to force teachers to launder billions of dollars to the Democrat Party through mandatory union dues, this entire multibillion-dollar power-mongering racket is in danger. This is not at all about the best education for kids; it’s about money and power.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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America’s Education System Is So Bad, Even Leftists Are Homeschooling Their Kids


BY: AUGUSTE MEYRAT | DECEMBER 08, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/08/americas-education-system-is-so-bad-even-leftists-are-homeschooling-their-kids/

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Homeschooling may be a huge commitment of time and energy, but it’s also the only real way to protect kids from bad kids, bad teachers, and bad ideas.

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Anew survey shows that after schools arbitrarily shut down for several consecutive months, parents of all political backgrounds continue to take on the rigors and responsibilities of homeschooling long after schools have reopened.

Educators in both public and private schools should be asking why this is. Why would parents decline the services of certified professionals running various curricular and extracurricular programs at an operational, fully equipped campus just down the road? Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars go into these schools, which not only educate children but serve as the cultural center of most localities. By homeschooling, parents are saying no to all that — along with the lifestyle they could have without kids at home — and instead shouldering the burdens of pedagogy, instructional materials, scheduling, behavioral management, and socializing their kids throughout their academic careers.

Not only this, but why would parents on the left who agreed with lockdowns and are largely sympathetic to public schools opt to homeschool? According to the survey, “47% of new homeschoolers skewed left of center self-reporting as either progressive or liberal (vs. 32% pre-Covid homeschoolers).”

Educators need to investigate this, but rather than confront the glaring problems of schooling — low standards, chaotic classes, corrupt bureaucracies, rampant tech addiction, and leftist propaganda — or do the slightest bit of soul-searching, nearly all administrators and educators have dismissed these concerns and now pretend that the last two years never happened, except when they need to make excuses to the communities they serve. The monopoly on public education has afforded them the luxury to forget everything and learn absolutely nothing.

Nowhere is this complacency better illustrated than in the recent book “Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now” by Anya Kamenetz. Despite devoting more than 300 pages to the mistakes made by public school leaders and education unions during Covid, Kamenetz never thought to question the general mediocrity of these institutions. Instead, she wholeheartedly supports them and advocates for more funding. How exactly will more money make up for the learning loss and the psychological damage done by derelict school systems? Kamenetz never says, but she does find time to attack President Trump.

This leaves parents of all political persuasions to determine what they can do to save their kids. Sure, some may fight the good fight and send their kids to public schools, be more vocal at school board meetings, and keep a close ear to what’s happening in their children’s classes. Others may be blessed with a classical school that recreates the old-fashioned learning experience that prevailed in the West before things got so bad. And some may simply hold their noses and think happy thoughts as they drink the Kool-Aid, convincing themselves that everything will be fine and that their clinically depressed and gender-confused child who spends xir days binging on violent anime and #neurodivergent TikTok videos is simply going through a phase and will learn to read and do math eventually.

Or they can try homeschooling. It may be a huge commitment of time and energy, but it’s also the only real way to protect kids from bad kids, bad teachers, and bad ideas. 

Although Covid has exacerbated the situation, the rationale for homeschooling isn’t all that new. What’s notable is how homeschooling today appeals to conservatives and leftists alike. While conservatives have always liked the option of homeschooling as a means of safeguarding their values and avoiding the harms of government incompetence and modern decadence, leftists generally paid lip service to public schools (while sending their kids to private schools) and looked down on the homeschooling crowd as fundamentalist crackpots doomed to being unsuccessful losers.

This has changed in recent years. Now it’s leftists who want to safeguard their values and circumvent the problems of formal schooling. Ironically, their reasons for doing this are the exact opposite of why conservative parents homeschool. These parents actually believe that schools are way too traditional in their values and instruction, don’t offer enough accommodations to suit their children’s learning style, and still do too little about Covid. They fear their child will be bullied, receive bad grades, and be red-pilled by that one Christian conservative teacher they have for English.

Despite certain school boards and superintendents doing their utmost to adhere to liberal orthodoxy, this does little to change the conservative nature of their actual schools. As Robert Pondiscio argues in Newsweek, the very concept of formal schooling is inherently conservative: “Kids sit at desks, teachers stand in front of the room and the academic diet leans heavily on the best that has been discovered, thought and created: our language, literature, history, scientific discoveries and artistic achievements. This default mode is by definition culturally ‘conservative.’” This is often a big turnoff for leftist parents, many of whom insist on a “progressive learning” experience. Many want something student-centered, self-paced, relevant to current times, less judgmental (i.e., no grades or assessments), and altogether open and undefined — something only achievable through homeschooling. 

The mutual disdain for formal schools from both the left and the right perfectly illustrates the “horseshoe theory,” in which opposing sides of an ideological spectrum come closer together as they become more extreme. So while the reason for homeschooling may be different to the point of incompatibility, the outcome is the same: Parents aren’t happy with their public schools, so they seek out alternatives.

Whether this leads to a renaissance or decline in education is anyone’s guess, though I’m pessimistic about rebirth if homeschooling becomes a leftist trend. Without a neighborhood school to provide some kind of personal stability and connection to the greater world for these families, it’s difficult to see how this benefits anyone. Conservatives usually have a church and extended family and abide by a clear set of principles; most leftists lack these foundations, so it’s difficult to see how they could make homeschooling work. More likely, they will become the “unschooled” crackpots on the margins, unable to function in society whom they have derided for so long.

The atomization of America and the epidemic of loneliness will likely get worse if too many families opt out of formal schooling. Covid demonstrated that most families need their schools, and even if schools refuse to see it, it’s also true that they need families.

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.

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‘Showing Their True Self’: Biden Admin Empowers Teachers Unions To Push Gender Ideology And Critical Race Theory


By REAGAN REESE, CONTRIBUTOR | October 02, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/02/teachers-unions-gender-identity-crt-biden-admin-power/

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  • Teachers unions are helping school districts implement Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender identity through different initiatives such as LGBTQ badges, summer reading lists and advertisements. 
  • The more recent push by the unions comes from the backing of the Biden administration, whose beliefs align with the teachers unions. 
  • “Teachers unions are certainly embracing ‘wokeness’ and showing their true self: their actions show they don’t care about the academic success of our kids, they only care about money and furthering their own political ambitions,” Parents Defending Education Director of Community Engagement Mailyn Salabarria told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

Teachers’ unions have a long history of political action, but now teachers unions are advocating for gender identity and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to be taught in schools. This recent push has come because of the support of the Biden administration, experts tell the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Teachers unions have been notorious for entering political races; in the 2021-2022 school year, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, poured millions into political funding. The belief that gender ideology and CRT should be in classrooms has long been present, but the Biden administration has empowered the beliefs to be embraced, experts told the DCNF. (RELATED: Major Teachers Union Goes On Strike, Delaying The First Day Of School For Thousands)

“I was a former school board member from 2016 and 2020 and we did not see this stuff like we’re seeing now,” Laura Zorc, director of education reform for Building Education for Students Together, a parental rights in education organization, told the DCNF. “I was not a school board member under the Biden administration. I’ve seen a radical change starting to take place in January 2021 when he took office. Underneath the school districts, you had people that had those beliefs in those feelings that we should be embracing this, but there was never that support and this is really where we see all this coming from, the Biden administration.”

As a part of a summer reading list in August, the National Education Association recommended students read “Why We Fly” by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, a book that describes two girls who kneel for the national anthem. The book explicitly talks about marijuana use and is paired with discussion questions on activism.

In September, an Ohio chapter of the National Education Association provided Hilliard City Schools in Columbus, Ohio, with LGBTQ ally badges that featured a flag with the words “I’m Here.” The badges were for educators to wear in order to show their support for the LGBTQ community.

The badges featured a QR code that took students to the National Education Association’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer+ Caucus website which provides adult resources on sexual education. An Ohio parental rights in education group called the website “age-inappropriate” and said it “crosses the line.”

“The way that they’re bringing this in is through an inclusive, safe environment, you know, the mental health aspect,” Zorc told the DCNF. “‘If our kids don’t feel safe, then they’re not going to be able to learn so we have to fix that because that helps us improve the quality of academics if our kids are feeling more safe at school.’ When I look at this, it’s hard to separate. It’s not one group of LGBTQ teachers. It’s not one group that’s wanting the Critical Race Theory ideologies. It’s really coming from that Democratic teacher union leadership like these Randi Weingartens and people like that.”

Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

The New Jersey National Education Association ran an ad ahead of the 2022-2023 school year that depicted parents who speak out against gender identity and CRT as “extremists.” The ad cites two articles, one describing groups working to remove books featuring LGBTQ and CRT imagery from school libraries and the other discussing a New Jersey state senator’s bill which prohibits lessons on gender identity for kindergarten through sixth grade.

About a year ago, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the Biden administration comparing parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.” Attorney General Merrick Garland called on the FBI to “use its authority” on the parents who disrupt school board meetings and pose a threat.

“The current administration actions also show they are on board with making politics and ideologies the priority in the classrooms,” Parents Defending Education Director of Community Engagement Mailyn Salabarria told the DCNF, “instead of addressing the historically low proficiency scores of our students and the learning loss they’ll suffer for generations to come. And this has emboldened teachers unions and activist teachers to push for even more ideology instead of the basics of academic instruction.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a protest near the office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to ask him to work on gun-safety legislation on June 03, 2022 in Miami, Florida. Following the latest mass shootings some activists across the country are asking their politicians to enact commonsense gun laws. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a protest near the office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to ask him to work on gun-safety legislation on June 03, 2022 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Ahead of the 2022-2023 school year, the Department of Education (DOE) called for action to address a nationwide teacher shortage. The DOE announced partnerships with schools across the country to address the problem they say was brought on during the pandemic.

“They’re saying that we have a teacher shortage,” Zorc told the DCNF. “We do not have a teacher shortage. Teachers are moving to other environments where they’re not forced to teach this stuff. So when it comes to Critical Race Theory, when it comes to this gender ideology, it is really being spearheaded from the top down. That’s why we’re seeing this massive exodus of our public school teachers, because they were waiting on retirement, but a lot of them are like, ‘I cannot even I can’t do this anymore.’”

The push from the teachers unions for CRT and gender identity curricula comes as students across the nation post record learning losses; K-12 reading levels have dropped to where they were in 1990, the largest ever drop in the scores, while math levels saw their first ever decline.

“Teachers unions are certainly embracing ‘wokeness’ and showing their true self: their actions show they don’t care about the academic success of our kids, they only care about money and furthering their own political ambitions,” Salabarria told the DCNF.

The National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and the DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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3 Reasons Parents Are Absolutely Right To Demand Informed Consent To What Schools Do To Their Kids


REPORTED BY: EMILIE KAO | MARCH 10, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/10/3-reasons-parents-are-absolutely-right-to-demand-informed-consent-to-what-schools-do-to-their-kids/

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A parent can look at the label on a juice box to decide what ingredients to allow into her child’s body. He should also be able to decide what ingredients a teacher puts into his child’s mind, but that isn’t the case in a growing number of public schools.

When Covid-19 brought the classroom into the kitchen, parents’ eyes were opened to some unsettling revelations, including that their children are being indoctrinated into critical race theory, and that some schools are secretly treating girls as boys and vice-versa.

Food labeling helps parents make informed decisions about what their children eat. In the same way, transparency helps parents make informed decisions about what their children learn. Yet some schools are resisting calls for transparency. Corporate media and teachers’ unions have inaccurately disparaged parents, but these critics are wrong. Here are three reasons why.

1. Children belong to their parents, not to the ‘community’ or the state.

Former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry infamously called on her viewers to “break through our kind of private idea that ‘kids belong to their parents,’. . . and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Her pitch was strikingly similar to that of Terry McAuliffe, former Virginia governor and chair of the Democratic National Committee, who said parents shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach.

This view of parental rights is at odds with parents’ fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized this in 1925 in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, stating, “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

As Professor Melissa Moschella writes, parental rights stem from the uniquely intimate relationship between parents and children. Children belong to their families, which are headed by their parents. Therefore, parents have the most direct obligation and authority to care for children until they are mature enough to direct their own lives. Until then, parents mediate a child’s relationship to the larger political community.

The failure to recognize that the family is distinct and relatively independent from the political community, and that parental rights are pre-political and natural rights, is not just wrong, but dangerous. Moschella notes Hannah Arendt’s observation that eliminating the intermediary structures between the individual and the state — namely the family and the church — is the essence of totalitarianism.

2. More schools are crossing the boundary line between education and indoctrination.

If schools just taught the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic), parents would not suspect schools were undermining their values, beliefs, and authority. But, as parents in Albemarle County, Virginia, recently learned, some schools are indoctrinating students with so-called “anti-racism” ideology.

Instead of condemning all racism, “anti-racism” replaces one form of racism with another. Following “anti-racist” logic, Albemarle County schools used race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity to label students as “dominate” or “subordinate.”

Parents from five families of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds challenged the policy. The school undermined what these parents believe and teach their children — that all people are created equal and should be treated as such. The school even threatened to punish students for not supporting the policy.

Yet, as Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit wrote in Oliver v. Arnold, “Schools should educate—not indoctrinate. Teachers can teach. And teachers can test. But teachers cannot require students to endorse a particular political viewpoint.”

Parental rights don’t end at the schoolhouse gate. Parents must be able to protect their children from policies that place burdens and privileges on them according to their immutable characteristics.

3. Backed by the Biden administration, schools are even engaging in unauthorized treatment of students’ mental health.

The U.S. Department of Education has promoted “gender support plans.” An official fact sheet instructs schools to maintain “confidentiality” for students who identify as transgender at school by not using the student’s birth name or “sex assigned at birth if the student wishes to keep this information private.” But there is no mention of notifying, much less involving, parents in such a consequential decision to adopt a new name and pronouns that correspond to the opposite sex.

The agency tells schools to support a student’s gender transition by using “a checklist of issues to discuss with the student or their family” (emphasis added). Without an explicit requirement that schools inform and obtain parental consent to treat the child as a member of the opposite sex, it is reasonable to assume that notification to parents is optional. The schools may also perceive parental notification as a matter that depends on whether the child views their parents as “affirming” of gender transition.

Schools’ use of “gender support plans,” like those recommended by the Biden administration, have shocked parents around the country. After learning that schools sought to hide their children’s emotional distress from them, they challenged these policies in Wisconsin, Florida, and California courts.

Alliance Defending Freedom recently informed Virginia’s Harrisonburg City School District that its policy of using different names and pronouns amounts to “a psychosocial treatment that will increase the odds of long-term persistence,” according to Dr. Kenneth Zucker, an expert in treating gender dysphoria in children. Up to 90 percent of children with gender dysphoria eventually become comfortable with their bodies if they aren’t encouraged to live as the opposite sex. Schools should not endanger students by hiding information from parents about their mental health or engage in unauthorized treatment of gender dysphoria.

Lockdowns allowed many parents to see the ingredients inside their children’s education. That prompted them to support laws that provide more transparency into curriculum and policies. Parents should be able to decide on the education that best suits their child and their family’s beliefs.

Too many schools are hiding crucial information. They must be held accountable through policies that require transparency, so parents won’t receive more nasty surprises.

Emilie Kao is senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy with Alliance Defending Freedom.

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