“You have a say in your kids’ education –
not government and not telling you what to do,” the California Republican said
last week during an education policy discussion.
The bill is a revival of a legislative
proposal Republicans pitched in 2021, during the fallout over pandemic
schooling at a time in which school board meetings were overwhelmed by throngs
of parents angry about masks, virtual learning and the types of books their
children were reading – a stew of culture war issues strategically magnified by
conservative politicians.
Among other things, the bill would require
schools to publicly post their academic standards, curriculum, school budget
and spending, and a list of books available in libraries. It would mandate two
parent-teacher conferences each year and enshrine the existing rights of
parents to speak at school board meetings. And it would prevent schools from
sharing or selling student data to tech companies.
It’s unclear what type of teeth it would
have and how much it would cost to police each provision. Of course, that’s not
the point since the bill is set to die in a Democratic-controlled Senate. But
heading into a 2024 presidential election, what’s most important is what it
signals to parents: that at a moment when their children are struggling with
unprecedented academic setbacks and mental health challenges, when public
school enrollment is careening and teacher shortages are piling up, they can
play a crucial role in controlling the chaos and choosing for themselves what
they want their children to learn.
The strategy is already playing out in real
time in red states across the country as Republican governors pitch sweeping
K-12 overhauls seizing on the parental education movement – overhauls that go
well beyond simply mandating what parents can know and say – that
GOP-controlled statehouses are eagerly advancing and adopting.
In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders
announced a 144-page proposal that would boost starting salaries for teachers
from $36,000 to $50,000, provide performance bonuses of up to $10,000 and allow
teachers up to 12 weeks of maternity leave, while also eliminating the state's
mandated salary schedule, which sets pay ranges for teachers based on their
years of experience and education. The legislation would also establish a
voucher program that would divert public funding to help parents pay for
private and home-school options and ban instruction on sexual orientation and
gender identity before fifth grade and the teaching in all grades of critical
race theory – an esoteric, graduate-level academic inquiry that has become an
umbrella term for teaching a version of history emphasizing institutional
racism.
