What Happened to Listening to Parents?

Education advocates who have spent years fighting for parents to "have a voice" and "a seat at the table" were never really talking about *all parents*

It has been forever since I’ve written here and that is because I have been very busy listening to parents. In my role as the director of outreach at Parents Defending Education, I spend my days (and nights and weekends) reading and exchanging emails and talking on the phone with parents from all over the country who are concerned about what is happening in their children’s schools. I’ll get to those concerns in a moment.

It is always wrong to shame, denigrate and discriminate based on a person’s immutable traits. I assumed that was a non-controversial statement, a principle behind which we could all unite. But in recent months it has increasingly been met with resistance, hostility and personal smears.

So be it.

About two years ago I started writing about my concerns over the shaming of children in the context of boys and the anti-male rhetoric that permeates our culture and schools. (Anyone who follows my work knows that the “boy crisis” is top of mind for me.) Not only am I convinced that denigrating boys is wrong on moral grounds but also I know that most of the rhetoric on the subject is flat out wrong. The disparity in outcomes between boys and their sisters is staggering and the powers-that-be continue to pretend that the reverse is true.

The accepted denigration and use of shame based on identity labels like race, gender, religion and sexual orientation has metastasized into lots of schools, both public and private. In Evanston, Illinois, kindergartners are being encouraged not to lean into their whiteness. (A lawsuit was recently filed against the school board, superintendent and assistant superintendent.) In East Bridgewater, Massachusetts middle schoolers are required to sit through lessons on “toxic masculinity” and “heterosexual privilege” in a Civics class. Parents from California to Pennsylvania report that their requests to view instructional materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion have been denied due to “copyright restrictions” and non-disclosure clauses in contracts with outside vendors. Students (and staff) are being separated into groups based on their race and even excluded from events because they are “white identifying.” It has become commonplace for schools, in the name of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” to encourage students to become activists in their own homes and agitate against their parents.

Agitate against their parents.

Is it any surprise that parents have begun to rise up and speak out? Their primary instinct and obligation is to protect their children. When 9-year-olds start coming home from school saying  “I wish I didn’t have white skin” and “my teacher told me I was born racist,” their parents know that something is very wrong. When little boys from coast to coast state--as a matter of fact--that “teachers only like girls” and “only boys get in trouble,” we need to listen. When schools sort students and staff into separate groups based on their race, we need to object.

I have long stood proudly with people from all over the country who believe that parents deserve a seat at the education table. Together we have taken the slings and arrows that come with publicly advocating for all families, regardless of race, creed, income or zip code, to have the self-determination to choose the right school for their children. We have shouted from the rooftops about the abysmal reading instruction that permeates schools across our nation and pushed for every child to receive science and evidence-based reading instruction. We have shined a light on the media’s disparate treatment of parent advocates when we believe that race and class are at play. We have laughed and we have cried--together.

We were united by the fundamental belief that parents need and deserve to be heard, seen as partners in their children’s educational experience. We were united in the belief that parents should have a front row seat to what is going on, that transparency is essential not only because public dollars are at play but also because trust is impossible without it. We agreed it was always a bad sign when a school was found to be hiding something or intentionally misleading families about what was really going on.

Something has changed.

As parents speak up at school board meetings across the country about the critical theory infused equity and antiracism initiatives that teach race and gender essentialism and force children into identity boxes, it is clear that many long time parent advocates don’t actually believe that all parents deserve to be heard or to have a seat at the proverbial table. When black, white, brown and Asian moms and dads stand up against critical theory based practices in the classroom, long time parent champions dismiss them out of hand, erase them or worse, call them hideous names. This indicates to me that it was never really about parents—it was about ideology and the parents who got on board with it were the ones with whom they’d stand.

After a decade or more fighting against the teachers’ unions, together, many “ed reformers” are sharing a playbook with the AFT’s Randi Weingarten and the NEA’s Becky Pringle.

A clarifying revelation, indeed.

Now, back to what I’ve been learning from listening to parents from every state (yes, including Hawaii and Alaska!) Contrary to what the news media wants you to believe (since division and outrage are the name of their game), the upset and pushback that has exploded into public view does not break down along convenient political or racial lines; requests for anonymity do break more neatly along those lines. (Undocumented parents are, for obvious reasons, especially afraid to attach their names to complaints about the identitarian and hyper-sexual content their children are being exposed to in school but so are Bernie voters who find themselves disgusted with their own tribe.)

I talk to moms and dads and grandparents and teachers from all over the country who are reaching a breaking point with their school’s outsized focus on their children’s group identities, with race and gender at the top of the list; they are lifelong Republicans, Democrats, Independents and apolitical types. I am not surprised this is bubbling up based on the conversations I’ve been having over the past two years with mothers of sons about the anti-male sentiment that increasingly permeates schools, academia and the culture at large. Not only are their boys shamed for being born male but disparities go unacknowledged and ignored when boys are on the losing side. And when it comes to schools, boys are basically always on the losing side. (The outsized response I received to this piece in early 2020 was a signal to me that emotions were already close to a boil.)

It was only a matter of time until race essentialism and critical social justice reared its ugly head enough to capture the attention of parents. COVID accelerated that timeline by bringing school right into our kitchens and living rooms. George Floyd’s murder, and schools’ responses to it, poured gasoline on a fire that had already started to burn.

Every parent has a right to know what their children are being taught at school. No parent should have to accept that their child be taught race and gender essentialism, let alone shamed for their immutable traits. Every parent (and child) should be able to ask questions without fear of intimidation or retribution.

Parents have long been at a huge disadvantage in the blood sport that is public education—the money and power of the monopoly is overwhelming and often impenetrable. But this feels different. As parents have risen up in the wake of prolonged school closures as well as what they’ve seen and heard coming out of school-issued laptops during zoom school, they are a more formidable opponent than ever. And they have support, both new and old, from organizations like mine (Parents Defending Education) as well as FAIR, Counterweight, and FIRE. The frenzied coordination between the teachers’ unions, mainstream media outlets and progressive organizations is a clear sign that they are preparing for battle.

But it feels like the tables may be turning. I will do whatever I can to make it so.