Jennifer Berkshire wrote a fascinating article in The New Republic about the politics and history behind the “parent rights” issue. She reminds us that the issue came to a boil in the 1990s, as the GOP cynically seized upon it as a sure fire winner to motivate the base. And that it has an even longer history, as she shows.
Will it prove to be a winner for the GOP?
Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin jumped on the issue in the Virginia gubernatorial election, and he won.
Berkshire writes:
In Youngkin’s upset win, the GOP saw its path to forever rule. And it was lined with angry parents. In his election-night letter, dashed off as votes were still being counted, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pledged to roll out a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” as a central plank of the GOP’s efforts to retake Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024. Josh Hawley, who aspires to occupy that residence, announced his own rights bill, one that would “turn back efforts to shut parents out of their children’s education.” The Wall Street Journal made the new cause official: The GOP was now the “Parents’ Party.”
Republicans’ newfound passion for America’s parents has a straightforward explanation. As the Virginia victory demonstrated, parental rage can be mined for electoral gold. And right now parents have plenty of reasons to be unhappy. Pandemic schooling, with its arduous, unpredictable schedule of shutdowns and mandates, is in its third year, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, school districts are fumbling as they grapple with an array of contentious issues, including the appropriate way to teach about racism and how best to accommodate the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. The result has been an incendiary debate about not just what schools teach and how they’re run but whose voice really matters in those decisions.
This is not the first time parents’ grievances have been exploited for politics’ sake. Three decades ago, the GOP and a familiar line-up of conservative groups coalesced behind the same banner of parental rights. The cause even made it into the GOP’s Contract With America, the ambitious legislative agenda laid out by conservatives en route to flipping Congress in 1994. When Pat Buchanan launched his 1996 presidential bid, he declared himself the candidate of parents. “You have my solemn word,” Buchanan intoned on the stump in New Hampshire, a state he went on to win. “I will shut down the U.S. Department of Education, and parental right will prevail in our public schools again.”
And yet within a few years, the issue came to be seen as a stalking horse for the religious right’s agenda of dismantling public education, and it fizzled with surprising speed. Now, as conservatives once more wave the banner of parents’ rights, the sudden demise of a potent political issue 30 years ago offers some valuable lessons.
Once more, the GOP has grabbed the issue, this time to push their privatization agenda. If Democrats are wise, they will read Berkshire’s article and prepare for the GOP offensive. To do so, they must support public schools, unions, and public school teachers vigorously, instead of trying to cut a deal with charter schools, hedge fund donors, and enemies of unions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you read ed reformers, as I do, and maybe I’m reading the wrong ones, maybe there are others who don’t work for think tanks of ed reform-funded orgs and lobbying groups, what sticks out is how LITTLE effort and discussion is directed to public schools.
Unless it’s negative- then there’s a ton- but positive or productive or practical? Almost none of it. It all starts with the assumption that everyone who works in public schools is “self interested” and operating in (essentially) bad faith and therefore the only approach anyone can use is mandated testing and (always negative) regulations.
I don’t know about “Democrats” but since the vast majority of people use public schools I would think there would be an opening for some political party to actually support them and value them. ALL of the “solutions” in ed reform are either “new and punishing mandates for public schools” OR promoting charter and private schools or various favors of vouchers. That’s it. That’s the whole “movement”.
The “parent power” we saw at those school board meetings was wholly adversarial- it was presented as “parents” fighting the evil public schools, who of course operate wholly against the interests of parents so must be heavily policed. The flip side of that in ed reform is the insistence that charter schools and publicly funded private schools of course operate wholly in the interest in parents, so should be unregulated. This is just nonsense. It’s ideological and it’s anti-public school. It’s a clear bias against the public system. An ideological preference for “privatized” or “private”.
Democrats don’t even have to go to far to be the “pro public school” Party. They can just refrain from joining the consistently and systemically anti-public school ed reform “movement”, but they can’t even do that.
There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Jeb Bush’s “vision” for public education and Arne Duncans. They are identical. Democrats just adopted the Bush approach – they don’t even have their own.
As long as the Tom Daschle Group is a lobbyist for Strive (at one time called K12, Inc), a big segment of Dems will remain on the public schools sidelines. Daschle is on the Center for American Progress Board. John Podesta who is Board chair appeared in a video with Chester Finn calling for support of politicians who achieve privatization. As long as Bloomberg and Bill and Melinda Gates want privatization, a large segment of influential Dems will remain on the sidelines.
I don’t see that DINO’s feel much heat over the issue. If Republicans are elected, they can work easily with them.
Parents have rights as long as they conform to the will of the vocal minority that shows up at the school board, stirred by the right wing. But let a parent come down on the side of the opposition and their rights will evaporate like a rain in Las Vegas.
These parents are screaming for lebenstraum. Elbow room for my own warped kind, death to my opponents.
Here’s an example of the work of ed reform:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/ohio-charter-news-weekly-121021
More funding for charters (but no additional for public schools) and a cheerleading article promoting private school voucher litigation.
What do public schools get? They get new regulations on remote learning. So they dumped some more paperwork on every public school principal in the state, while funding and promoting the schools they prefer. That’s a productive work year on “public education” in the echo chamber. Nothing positive for public school students, but who cares about them? If they were ideologically correct they would be taking a private school voucher anyway.
It’s all like this. 100% carrots for the schools and privatized systems they prefer, 100% sticks for public schools. I don’t think there’s been a net positive for public school students out of the Ohio legislature in 20 years, although they did manage to put together a funding formula, ten years after deadline and we only got that because we met every demand of the voucher lobby. They simply return no value to students who attend public schools. There’s no upside.
Public school students have no real advocates in government. They have “agnostics” who don’t overtly oppose their schools but also add no positive value and “ed reformers”, who offer nothing but charters and vouchers.
Florida is going to create a private right of action so public school “parents” (or any activist) can sue them on “wokeness”. That’s the ed reform contribution to our schools this year. Can’t we do better than this?
Opportunistic Republicans will repeat any winning strategy. Using a scapegoat like public education and teachers worked in Virginia so we can expect to see more of it. Public schools are easy targets. While Biden has been willing to openly express his support for public schools and unions, corporate Democrats supported by hedge funds have a significant voice in the party. I doubt public schools will get any support from them.
After Youngkin was elected, the Washington Post finally wrote an article about the parents who weren’t represented in the oversaturation of media coverage that purported to present parents who just happened to want exactly what Republicans were offering.
‘A dog whistle and a lie’: Black parents on the critical race theory debate
Washington Post, By Leslie Gray Streeter
December 7, 2021
“It seems as though Black and Brown voices were ignored, and the voices were centered on White parents and their concerns,” Mullenix says. “I’m constantly hearing, ‘Oh, no, suburban women, suburban moms and their vote.’ And when I look around me and see these suburban moms and housewives, a lot of them look like me. But when I hear the conversations on the news, it doesn’t sound like they’re talking about me.”
…..
Excluding the opinions of families like Mullenix’s, who bear the effects of racial history and bias in a different way than most of those they saw interviewed, omits half the story, she and others say. Many feel left out of the conversation that is, essentially, about them and their children.”
I would say that the coverage was centered not on “white parents and their concerns” but on white, right wing Republican parents and their concerns, which was magnified and amplified so that voters were left with a very strong impression that this was universal, and the victory by Youngkin added to that.
No one cared about “her e-mails” until the non-stop, constant drumbeat left lots of people propagandized into believing there was something inherently corrupt about the Democrat and depressed the vote for her.
No one cared about critical race theory until this constant drumbeat left just enough people certain there must be something wrong with Democrats for supposedly “supporting” it.
Until the Democrats find a way to stop the media helping to legitimize and amplify whatever new issue the Republicans present to sway voters into certainty that there is just “something wrong” with whatever it is Republicans find politically empowering to get voters to turn against, this will continue.
Notice these kinds of articles didn’t come out before the election. And a single article doesn’t do it. It needs to be the constant amplification of articles over and over again — the way the far right did with the anti-CRT movement – to have an effect.
^^^ One thing that bothers me is when I hear people blaming public schools themselves for failing to do a better job defending themselves against the right wing attacks. It is similar to the way people blame Democrats for not doing a better job defending themselves against the right wing attacks. It feels very wrong to blame public schools for not defending themselves better and making voters support them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2021/12/07/black-parents-crt-race/
Republicans are experts at messaging. They are tribal, and they know how to use the media to “gin up their base,” even when there is no truth in their message. To promote their anti-CRT messaging, a number of Republican governors and representatives presented the false notion that CRT is a problem in public schools. They started to encourage parents to go to board meetings to complain about curricula and books in the library. The media is there, of course, to capture the moments for all to see. Republicans are skillful propagandists that feed off fear and scapegoating. Trump taught them well.
Yep. So the question should really be how to counter the propaganda. The democrats end up wasting all their efforts debating whether Medicare for All is more of a winning issue than Medicare for All who Want it. They waste their efforts debating whether supporting public magnet schools that admit via a single exam are the problem or whether public magnet schools that changed their admission to admit via other factors is the problem. They waste their efforts debating whether the DEI that has been developed is terrible, horrible, lousy or just a waste of time and money.
Meanwhile, the far right knows that voters don’t care about the details of this and while they hear the left bashing the details of one policy or another, they hear the Republicans wrapping it all up in a near little package — “parents’ rights”.
Democrats have to get a lot better at messaging to stave off the coming end of democracy.
drumbeat: YES
Yup. Just like the Welfare Cadillac Queen, Gary Hart on the Monkey Business, Willie Horton, Swiftboat, Benghazi and the Pedopizzaparlor, and the invasion by caravans of rapists and murderers who want your jobs. Same old game. Works almost every time because the United States is, uh, exceptional.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go put up a scarecrow to keep CRT from stealing the seed in my planters. (Writing, here, from Flor-uh-duh, where it is Spring)
At some point the amount of Teflon becomes laughable. Read the linked Berkshire article which references Pat Buchanan (and, Phyllis Schaffly). Where’s the obvious tie-in to, “Remembering Nixon’s Catholic Coup: An Interview with Pat Buchanan” ? (America The Jesuit Review, 8-5-2014).
Those in the state Catholic Conferences who take credit for school choice legislation must
be thinking, “sweet deal, we’ve got dispensation from Democrats, journalists and influencers.” Just the way the religious right wants, the half with links to the Koch network, cloaked.
More completely valid and unbiased ed reform “research”:
The 74
Starting Now: “Voting with Their Feet,” a webinar about enrollment trends and increasing demand for innovative schools during the pandemic, hosted by The 74 and
ppi
Charter/voucher cheerleaders conduct a “panel discussion” where no one who is not a charter/voucher cheerleader is invited, reach intended and foregone conclusion- more charters and vouchers!
Echo chamber unsurprisingly determines that all of the policy echo chamber supports is also what everyone else wants! Science!
.
“Parents Rights” will be a winning issue for the right if the Left uses and continues to defend agains that framing of it.
Dems could frame as the party that protects religious pluralism but, they won’t.
Slight disagreement again, very, very slight. Explaining pluralism, what it means, perhaps even a catchy marketing/political phrase, is what Democrats must do in this day and age, win or lose. Religion (and non-religious folks), race, ethnicity, income, gender, freaks and geeks. The more mixed and diluted and, at the same time, respectful of legitimate interests and identities Americans are, the more American they are.
Timing. I just found this a couple of minutes ago to underscore the point above. And if you listen to his “reasoning” about how organizations will be defined by “approved” authorities, I suspect they will be part of future legal precedents in the administrative state of fascist America.
The part most missed when Steve Bannon crowed about eliminating the administrative state, he wasn’t talking about anarchy. He was talking about replacement with their own administrative state, one that would never allow itself to be replaced by petty things like accurate representation or elections.
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/12/scott-perry-ilhan-omar
Agree.
Very pleased, here, that FINALLY, one of the political parties is taking up the issue of parents’ rites.
–Lucibobius X
Meanwhile in Florida…
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-desantis-crtical-race-theory-ban-20211215-wjmd7dm3ofguhc2dmjdgdfc2iq-story.html
Even in conservative North Florida, 76% of the people do not support DeSantis’ latest attack on public education. The WOKE law allows any citizen to sue any public institution suspected of teaching CRT. Welcome to vigilante Florida!
And DeSatan quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., when introducing this. Aie yie yie.
Parents and guardians have always had those rights. Has the reich right always been so stupid?
It’s called rebranding.
I think this is to some degree a tempest in a teapot. Republicans are not going to be able to put K12 education at the top of national voting issues in a time of pandemic and inflation, refugee crisis at the border, sword-rattling by China and Russia. We here know from long frustration how difficult it has been to get education any public attention, let alone top billing.
Yes, Youngkin squeaked thro 50-48 against a Dem with middling support via a last-minute rallying of fragile whites fighting the culture war. That doesn’t turn VA red, or even purple. No more than GA is now purple because of recent narrow Dem Senate wins.
Berkshire’s analysis is excellent and points the way for Dems to defeat parents’ rights issue – when it is brought as a state legislative measure. The Youngkin win is different– a 3-day rallying cry, a last-minute “parents’ rights” promise that bears no close examination brought culture warriors out to the polls while Dems sat on their thumbs, not overly impressed by the McAuliffe/ Youngkin choice. It’s not insignificant, but politically it’s not about voter interest in public education. Youngkin took advantage of a current hot local issue to pull out the last stops. Had the contemporaneous local hot-button issue been immigrants/ refugees, or abortion, or affirmative action, or gun rights– etc– any one would have done just fine.
Republicans are not going to be able to put K12 education at the top of national voting issues in a time of pandemic and inflation.
The Repugs don’t seem to agree with you here, Ginny. If one watches what DeSantisssssss has been doing in Flor-uh-duh, one sees that every move he makes, now, is geared toward his upcoming candidacy, and he just announced his Texas-vigilante-style legislation (the Stop WOKE Act) to allow parents to sue teachers teaching CRT.
Sorry, Ginny, left one thing out. In order to get a sense of normalcy, what it should look like, and what could grow out of it, may I take the example of my oldie but goodie, the federal appropriations, as an example? Because in a normal world, hardly anyone would pay attention to it or feel it impact their lives in any serious way.
In a normal world, work on next year’s budget and appropriations process would begin a few days after the respective staffs have taken some time off after the conclusion of the previous year’s process sometime between the middle and end of September, comfortably before the start of the fiscal year on October 1. For those few pesky issues that seem to come up like, for example, some abortion-related or -contrived controversy, some environmental project somewhere, or aid to some country anywhere. Those appropriations bill might take an extra week or two to pass to iron out, but they don’t hold the entire process hostage and gum up all other legislation. And passing very short term resolutions to keep funding going at last year’s levels for a few days or couple of things always passes unnoticed and uncontroversially.
Then, when they get to work, the House tends to depend on last year’s bill as a starting point and takes in considerations of its subcommittees to in prepare one according to which party is in power but, with the exception of media issues, 98% of bills tend not to be that controversial. The president then submits his budget around February, the House subcommittees produce their first reports to full committee and the House to consider, most of them finish their work between the end of June and August recess, theoretically handing it over to the Senate, but they have been working on it all year and paying attention and talking to House and administration counterparts, so they generally tinker with bills to add, reduce, or eliminate legislative and political priorities to create bargaining positions in negations with House conferees when the Senate passes the bill. It’s usually all said and done by September 30 and then the cycle kicks off again.
That’s in a normal world. In that normal world, quiet oversight focused on actual priorities take precedent over legislatively-mandated actions or reductions. Professionals who care about their jobs and public service are sought, not loyal cronies biding their time for pensions. In a normal world, decisions on how educators teach would largely be left up to those professionals and they would report back to boards occasionally to let them know what they’re doing.
We don’t live in a normal world. Lies become public policy. Bigoted polemics become public discourse. Politics and government do not serve the public. All this will become permanent with no hope of change in less than two years and too many who know better don’t want to address this loudly and consistently. As a former issues director let me say this: issues do not matter now. It’s all hands on deck with the knowledge that we still have a good chance of sinking.
Greg, I agree. Our democracy is very sick right now. We are on the brink of losing it. Sixty percent of Republicans think the election was stolen and that Biden’s presidency is illegitimate. Some 20 million people, according to Barton Gellman innThe Atlantic, thinks it’s okay to take up arms and use violence to restore the guy whom they think won. He said that very few Republican leaders believe The Big Lie, but they join the chorus because they are afraid of being ousted like Liz Cheney, afraid of losing re-election, afraid for their personal safety.
Greg, what a really excellent summary of how appropriations/ budget process used to work, thank you very much. [I have read of some related aspect too & never can get my hands on it. Something connecting the gigunda last-minute no-time-to-read-them bills of recent years to congress ceding its power? Any idea?]
I’ve just read Edsall’s roundup of scholars analyzing the trouble we’re in: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/opinion/republicans-democracy-minority-rule.html Certainly echoes the doomsday knell I keep hearing and plugging my ears about. Be glad to unplug them when I hear somebody, somewhere, showing a path out of this fiasco.
Ginny,
I watched a zoom discussion with Atlantic writers Barton Gellman and Anne Applebaum. Anne said she is asked all the time, “What can we do?” Her answer: get involved. Support organizations promoting democracy. Join local groups. Be an activist. Run for office. I added in my question box, go to school board meetings. Run for school board.
To answer the parenthetical phrase above, by eliminating the regular order of process–but keeping the appearance of it in large part because Democrats keep attending hearings and meetings because they think they matter–virtually all power goes to the Speaker and more goes to the Senate majority leader. And by extension, their staffs and closest advisors. Rather than the deliberate, relatively open process I describe above, the final bill which will contain as many as 12 of the 13 appropriations bills (Defense, 70% of spending, is never really an issue and has absolutely no oversight) and be stuffed with items in the last minute with the approval of McConnell, small spending in the $1 trillion-plus bill, small enough to make House Democrats decide between those, more time to review the bill while government funding and world credit market remain in limbo, which puts them in a political corner. Man that was a long sentence.
There are close to 30,000 staffers on Capitol Hill. I would estimate, because of the current realty, virtually the entire legislative branch is controlled or influences at the highest levels is certainly lower than 100, probably closer to 50. Power has never been this centralized in our history, even during the Civil War, I think it could be argued, than it is right now. And it will be more condensed. But those 30,000 staffers will still be there to make things look normal. The hundreds of thousands of executive branch staff and workers, on the other hand, exercise some kind of real power down to the most petty division manager.
Looks like my first comment disappeared in the ether, which is why I began this one with “Sorry…” Wish I could remember what I wrote!
But I didn’t answer the question about ceding power. To put it as succinctly as I can, because the deliberative process is dead and the constituencies who were attached to parts of it don’t matter anymore, what should be an advisory role that ultimately signs into law or vetos (granted that’s both simplistic and technically correct), now the president becomes an active participant in the final bargaining of a legislative function. And rather that have to deal with 535 members of Congress, he only has to deal with a few people. This is not anything like the Founders envisioned (granted they didn’t have a clear vision of nuts and bolts).
All right, last one, sorry. As to how to get out of this fiasco, although I don’t think it will happen, I think it would be something like this:
If the appropriations functions normally, then it builds up a level of modicum, trust, and familiarity with members of Congress and staff. But most importantly, it would all the “government funding will run out” out of the news completely. People will forget about it. Federal workers will just go to work when fiscal years change. It would also restore congressional factions and prerogatives.
The would I think lower the political temperature, it would demonstrate normalcy. Over the long-run it would restore the legitimacy and independence of each executive branch department’s inspector-general. This would restore faith in the basic functions of government and de-politicize them further. That’s how important I think a functioning appropriations process is not just to Congress, but to the nation.
The idea of and authorizing legislation for was championed by Rep. Jack Brooks, who represented Diane’s hometown’s neighboring district in Beaumont (he’s the guy over Jackie Kennedy’s shoulder in the famous picture of LBJ’s swearing in). It has been responsible for billions of dollars of savings and more efficient government in the past 50 years. There’s a reason Bannon’s attack on the administrative state first focused and tried to emasculate excecutive branch inspectors general. They also acts as links between branches in the appropriations process, providing Congress with vital information about executive functions about which they would not little-to-nothing.
THANK YOU GREG! Thiis series goes straight into my own personal hall of fame– a page I keep with links to stuff I always need to go back and refer to. You should write a book. I will buy a copy for every member of my family.