Episode 25: I’m mad as h%*l and I won’t take it anymore!

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as the microdiscriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public education system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public school system. If you're looking to find out more information about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be discussing parents rights in the public school system, the parents rights movement, as well as parents unions. It's natural that parents have rights over all things related to their children. But what is the scope of parental rights in the public education system? Do they get to choose what is taught in the classroom or is it within parental rights to be informed about sexual education and medical interventions? I delve into what the parents rights movement is all about and the current controversies over this platform, what this movement means as well as state associated unions and what they represent. Those unions would be state associated parent unions that are springing up all over the country. I'll also cover the background and intent of the parents rights movement, what it means for K12 schools, and action steps that you can take when meeting with educators, as well as processes to follow if you decide to exercise your rights by opting out of standardized testing. I'll then wrap up this episode with the pertinent takeaways. The issue of parents rights is one of the most heated discussions in public education and includes debates over everything from COVID policy and curriculum choices to classroom discussions about race, gender and sexuality. The concept of parents rights is entangled in more than a century of legal wrangling, court precedents, federal and state statutes, and rhetoric over what it actually means in the educational setting. According to journalist Mark Walsh in Education week in the October 20, 2022 edition, this term could refer to rights under the US Constitution, under federal statutes, under state constitution or state statutes, or even school board regulations. When the term parents rights is used by some conservative parents today, it reflects a long standing and deep seated fear. The public school system indoctrinates children with the left wing ideological agenda, that public schools alienate children from families and cultures which undermines parental authority, and that the goal of public education is to enlist children on the wrong side of current culture wars. This just seems to be outright hostility to to any form of common education. State Senator Jim McCune plans to introduce a packet of bills to the 2023 Washington legislature that includes bans on critical race theory, sex education and puberty blockers for students. It will be part of a Parents Education Bill of Rights. Similar legislation is sweeping through other states. Five other measures to recognize the ultimate authority parents to determine what is best for their children's education were announced in August 24th press release by Republican Senator John McCune. The best way to address division and controversy and reduce the level of tensions and animosities is not to force a one size fits all solution on every student and parent, McCune stated in a press release. This packet of legislation requires that parents make the call and ensures they have access to all curriculum materials and resources necessary to see what their children are being taught. The Individual Class Freedom act would prevent K12 instructors from teaching critical race theory, more commonly known as crt. The Parents Bill of Rights targets crt, sex education and trans youth. But Katie Payne, executive director of communications for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, indicated that CRT isn't being taught in any K12 school in Washington. She said that the state doesn't have a definition of critical race theory in the K12 context. Payne said that K12 students in Washington have been learning about impacts of race and racism for decades, while learning subjects such as history, language arts and civics. These lessons don't divide students and they're not political, Pain said. The misconception that school districts are teaching crt, she said, seems to be a response to a national political and ideological narrative. The ultimate harm of that narrative is the trivializing and in some cases outright banning of the discussion of topics that should be foundational for all Americans, paine said. Understanding our common history provides our future leaders with a foundation for thinking critically about ways to solve problems their communities will face in the future. The bottom line is that all students, including their culture, values, heritage and lived experiences, should feel respected and valued in the classroom, including in discussions, materials and lessons. Now get this. Senator McCune also plans to propose legislation to ban puberty blockers for students, although the bill would only extend as far as taking the medication at school. For your information, puberty blockers are prescription medications that can be taken by transgender and non binary youth to suppress the release of sex hormones such as testosterone or estrogen. According to the Mayo Clinic, research has shown that suppressing puberty may help reduce anxiety and depression in children who have gender dysphoria. Another measure in the packet of bills would counter recently mandated comprehensive health education for all K12 students seeking reversal of the new law by requiring parents to sign permission slips for their kids to participate. The current law requires all students to participate in sex education. Although the requirements for each grade level vary, parents currently have the choice to opt their students out. Senator McCune's proposal also would require the state to provide vouchers for students who attend homeschool, religious and private school. Vouchers would be equivalent to the amount each student would be allocated from public school funds. The legislation isn't just limited to what's going on in the classroom, though. The Safe Facilities act will require schools to notify and get parental consent before restrooms or locker rooms are made gender neutral or opened to students whose gender assigned at birth does not correspond to the intended facility. Also, the Parental Involvement act requires parents, parental guardians or court notification and consent prior to providing a minor student with abortion or gender reassignment treatments at school, and would prohibit school officials from transporting students off school grounds for such purposes without parental or court consent. Ms. Payne encouraged parents and families to to have conversations with their children about the things that they learn in school and how they feel about them. Concerns should be elevated to the teacher or principal when necessary. It's unlikely that McCune's legislation will pass during this session, however. The legislature reconvenes in January 2023. Some parents rights advocates with a conservative view of things have a different perspective. For example, if Tiffany justice, who is the co founder of the group Moms for Liberty, states that her organization supports public education but that the system is failing parents. She indicated that the organization is committed to staying involved in the education of children in public school, even if it means that it threatens the power of unions, which have controlled school boards for decades. Moms for Liberty has quickly grown as a major voice for parental rights since its founding last year in 2021 in Florida and now has nearly 250 chapters in 42 states. It is a right wing parent group that has pushed for book bans and against equity initiatives in schools nationwide over the last year. They're making a tactical argument for parental rights based on a legitimate concern in local communities about how schools handle Covid and on how they handle topics that controversial such as race and racism and sexual identity issues. The group pushed for parental rights statutes to be passed in Florida in 2021 and 2022. The 2022 law, called the Florida Parental Rights and Education act, prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity and in K through three classrooms, requires such conversations after third grade to be age appropriate. Although this term is yet to be defined by the State Board of Education in Florida, opponents of this law have called it the don't say gay law and it has been challenged in court. The measure was built on a 2021 state law called the Florida Parents Bill of Rights, which also requires parents to be notified about health care services offered at their child's school with the right to decline any service offer. The law also requires parental approval or questionnaires on health screenings given to K3 students. At least 26 states are considering legislation this year that would expand parental rights in education. Conservative lawmakers have proposed parental rights amendments to to the US Constitution, although with very little success for years. Recently, Republican Representative Debbie Lesco of Arizona introduced an amendment that would establish the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education and care of their children as being a fundamental right. Her amendment states that the parental right to direct the child's education includes the right to choose public, private, religious or home schools and the right to make reasonable choices within public schools for their child. The Supreme Court has a 100 year line of striking down these types of laws or amendments to the US Constitution. In 1925, for example, in the Peers vs Society of Sisters case, the Justices struck down an Oregon law mandating public school attendance and thus precluding enrollment in in parochial schools. In that case, the Court said that the liberty of parents and guardians includes the right to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. The Court further stated that the child is not a 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. Most lower court opinions have ruled against parents seeking such broad influence over the school's curriculum. The current movement in support of parents rights is motivated by various goals, including social, religious and political ones that are usually tied with conservatives aimed at limiting discussion of race, LBGTQ rights, and other controversial topics and schools. It seems harder to tell people that the reason we pay for public schools with tax dollars is so that we all benefit from them and so that we ought to be able to be included in the decision making process.

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It seems unlikely that the parental rights issue are going to turn harmonious anytime soon. Which side this political tussle might eventually favor is yet to be determined. But as it unfolds, students, and especially students of color, are at risk of losing access to education about important issues because of book bans and legislative censorship on teaching of important societal and historical events. Parental rights is a nice sounding phrase that's being used, unfortunately, to advance a political ideology. Organizations such as Red Wine and Blue, which is a Democratic parents group, has been involved in counteracting the impacts of groups such as Moms for Liberty. The organization offers trainings for parents and explains how to fight against requests to ban books and the conservative agendas parents might bring to school board meetings. Red Wine and Blue is staffed in Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania Parent unions describe a variety of organizations, according to Sean Kavanaugh In Education Week, March 6th as far back as 2012, some of these organizations see themselves as countering the political stronghold of teachers unions, while others see the labor groups as allies. Still other parents unions focus on advancing their own tightly focused or very broad agendas and are less concerned with teacher and labor management issues. Those agendas include improving school for gifted and talented programs as well as closing the achievement gaps between minority students and white students. Many parent unions are still in their infancy, although they are cropping up in just about every state in this country. The main rise of the genesis of parents unions and organizations is the belief that parents and boys have been shut out of the policy debates for too long. Given that parent unions are relatively new players in education, there have been other organizations that have identified themselves as the voices of parents in one way or another for quite a while. One of the better known organizations is the National Parent Teacher association, which describes itself as the largest volunteer child advocacy association in the nation. Another organization, Parents Across America, fights what it sees as an overreach by the private sector into education as well as excessive testing. It also supports small class sizes and equitable funding across schools and student populations. The Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles based group, is another organization that has spearheaded its efforts to give families more leverage to make changes to low performing schools. Executive Vice president of the American Federation of Teachers Francine Lawrence, indicated that her national teachers unions had no objections to the work of parents unions because they can work easily with parents unions just as they do with other groups such as the pta. She notes, however, that the relationship will depend on the agenda of the leadership of those parents groups as well as the ability to discuss policy issues without politics and misguided passions. Another parents group, the New York City Parents Union, supports giving parents more power over schools, but it's not really in favor of some of the parent trigger proposals and similar efforts because it believes this will lead to more control of schools by private companies. The parent unions, as well as state lawmakers and community activists are pushing for parent trigger laws, which are measures that let parents vote to convert academically struggling schools to charter schools or to radically restructure the school in other ways. Supposedly, the power of trigger legislation is not that it would allow parents to impose or one academic solution on the school, but that the state and local district officials would take the parents ideas seriously. One example of this trigger law would be when in 2011, a group of parents in the 25,000 student Compton Unified School District organized a petition to convert one of their failing schools to a charter school. The Compton parents plan were met with strong opposition and a legal battle shortly ensued over the validity of their effort. This effort is still in litigation and the state has yet approved any improvement plans crafted by the parents through that parent trigger law. Lawmakers in other states have been drawn to the parent trigger idea. States such as Mississippi, Mississippi and Indiana parents can use trigger laws for leverage in negotiation with districts to make substantial changes to schools. However, while they require committed parents to rally behind a cause through political activity and grassroots organizing, the qualities that are needed to start a school are not based in politics. The bottom line is that parent triggers are still a rare occurrence, and even though the purpose is to restructure schools into a charter school conversion, charter schools are not a panacea for resolving public education issues. Some parents unions are started because of the experiences that the founder had with his or her children. This is the case with Kelly Williams Bolar of Akron, Ohio, who was jailed after authorities concluded that she broke law when she enrolled her daughters in a nearby school district while where she didn't live. She served nine days in jail and her felony convictions were later reduced to misdemeanors by the Ohio governor. She basically started her union as one way to support policies in Ohio that allow students to attend schools out of district. This is certainly one way to change policy at the state education level. Parents organizations that succeed in shaping policy and improving schools are successful because the use technology effectively to build membership and support their ideas and they know how to use data to give their arguments credibility. It's important that parents groups that are focused on improving schools academically need to make sure that all of their work is tied to student learning and not focused on things such as fundraising, extracurricular activities, and political controversies. Sometimes parental rights are demonstrated by opting out of high stakes standardized testing. Some parents choose to have their child opt out of high stakes testing because it has little to do with meaningful learning. Researcher James Cirillo asserted that high stakes testing is not the best illuminator of of student progress. As he reported in the Phi Delta Cabin in May of 2018, better forms of assessment are teacher constructed assessments, portfolio type approaches, and project based activities. The school that his third grade child was in ultimately accommodated his son for the third and fourth grade along with other parents who decided to opt out. This worked fine when the researcher was in Louisiana. However, different set of circumstances occurred. When he moved to South Carolina, he used the same reasoning as he had previously used in Louisiana, but this time the central office administration overruled the principal's authority and made his now fifth grader take the standardized testing. Upon learning this, the researcher made short order to go to the school and assert his rights as a parent. His child only participated in the testing for that day, although the child opted to read a book instead of actually take the test and the school honored his request for his younger son who was a third grader at that time. The process that James Carrillo pursued with opting out came from suggestions from Fair Test, the National center for Fair and Open Testing, United out national and various other grassroots state level groups formed through social media. The present opt out movement has done a lot to raise awareness of of the test centricity of schools. These parents of school age children and other grassroots groups resist standardized testing because they object to how testing is tied to a narrow focus on the curriculum, the corporatization and privatization of schools, the Common Core State Standards, as well as the evaluations of teachers based on standardized test scores. According to 2016 data from FairTest, 675,000 students opted out of testing in 2015, including 240,000 students in new York as well as a significant number of students in New Jersey, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, California, Oregon, Florida, and several other states. A large number of parents who have opted out for their children are white, but there's a growing constituency for communities of color. There are efforts, however, to derail the opt out movement. The parents who are leading the charge of the opt out movement have propelled it into the mainstream. A powerful way for any type of social, cultural or educational movement to begin is to be persistent in calling attention to the issue. It turns out that parents wield a significant amount of power in this area, even though university researchers, civic minded citizens, and educational organizations are also involved. So here's how this applies in one case to K12 education many school districts have created parent Right to Know guides in order to apprise parents of their various rights within the school district policies. For example, parents are provided with information about qualifications of teachers and paraprofessionals, how to obtain information about student achievement data, being notified if the child is a victim of violent crime at school, being informed about school choice and comparable services, including transportation, educational services and meals for homeless students, and the right to have complaints resolved, usually within 60 business days, depending on the district. These guides should be made readily available to you, and if they aren't, then you are certainly encouraged to ask the school district to provide the guide to you. Here are the action steps that you can take regarding the issues raised in this episode Whenever you have a question or concern about what's happening in your child's classroom or the school as a whole, be sure that your complaint is specific and concise. For example, if you're raising an issue about content or the curriculum taught in your child's classroom, be sure your question is about content and not about whether the educator needs to be more equipped and intentional in their instructional approach. You also need to be specific about the type of curriculum, meaning that there are five types the written curriculum, the taught curriculum, the assessed curriculum, the learned curriculum, and the absent curriculum. Be open to the teacher's explanation, but also understand that difficult or uncomfortable conversations bring about awareness of each person's perspective. As you prepare for a meeting with your child's teacher, be sure that you understand the teacher's philosophy for teaching. Also know what your goals are for your child as a learner and communicate those as well. Additionally, make sure that you provide the various ways to get in contact with you as well as your availability should any other issues arise. If you are interested in opting out for your child from standardized testing, inform yourself about the process by visiting websites such as FairTest at www.fairtest.org, united Opt Out national at www.unitedoptoutnational.org and Network for Public Education at www.networkforpubliceducation.org. these sites can provide you with information that you need to write an opt out letter to school officials. You should write that letter to school administrators well ahead of time to let them know of your intent to opt out and be prepared for pushback. Also, find out what your state's policy is with respect to opting out and if necessary, seek legal counsel. Use the information from the various websites that I mentioned to talk to your children about the value of assessment to improve teaching and learning and how there is an overemphasis on standardized testing that does little to accomplish this. Let your children know that by opting out, they will be joining a growing network of others who are doing the same thing. And finally, remain courageous. The choice is yours. Just follow your gut on whatever feels right to you, whether that's choosing to opt in to standardized testing or to opt out of it. You can reference the specific links that I mentioned in this episode's transcript. Here are this episode's takeaways Parental rights are a nice sounding phrase that's being used, unfortunately, to advance political ideology. The issue of parents rights is one of the most heated discussions in public education and includes debates over everything from COVID policy and curriculum choices to classroom discussions about race, gender, and sexuality. The concept of parents rights is entangled in more than a century of legal wrangling, court precedents, federal and state statutes, and rhetoric over what it actually means in the educational setting. Parents and families are encouraged to have conversations with their children about the things they learn in school and how they feel about them. Parents can use trigger laws for leverage in negotiating with districts to make substantial changes to schools. However, while they require committed parents to rally behind a cause through political activity and grassroots organizing, the qualities that are needed to start a school are not based in politics. And remember that the bottom line for parent trigger laws is that they are still a rare occurrence. Even though the purpose may be to restructure schools into a charter school. Charter schools are not a panacea for resolving public education issues. Parents organizations that succeed in shaping policy and improving schools are successful because they use technology effectively to build membership and support for their ideas, and they know how to use data to give their arguments credibility. Parents, unions and organizations and other groups share the feelings that parents should be primary stakeholders in education. They want to be involved in the educational system and its policies in order to affect change for the betterment of their children's educational attainment. The motivations behind founding of these unions and organizations are worth investigating if you are so inclined to join one or to start one of your own. Parent advocacy in education is about supporting equity for all students. Since the goal of public education is to educate all students. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast or whatever service you're listening to this also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a rating, a review or a comment and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. I really appreciate it if you would recommend my podcast to a friend directly on Twitter and mention my show in your tweet. Additionally, you can connect with me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the handle kimjfields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current issue or specific topic that you'd like for me to explore and discuss, shoot me a quick email@kimberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. 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