The Biden administration sees the writing on the wall when it comes to parents who are dissatisfied, concerned, and even angry about the state of their children’s education.
The usually perfunctory and dull school board meetings of pre-pandemic times have given way to standing-room-only crowds of parents with a lot to say about prolonged school closures, mask mandates, excessive COVID-19 testing, and “Zoom school” from the kitchen table that revealed students were learning more about privilege, oppression, and gender identity than they were basic math and reading. Some schools even found time for virtual drag queen story hours, in-person drag shows, and the creation of gender support plans to hide children’s new gender identities deliberately from their parents.
For 50 years, Democrats have held a consistent and sizable advantage on education over the GOP. As recently as January 2021, that advantage was a whopping 20 percentage points. But by March of this year, that number had fallen to 5 points.
In a calculated attempt to stop the bleeding and quell parents’ concerns, the Biden administration created the National Parents and Families Engagement Council, a group of national parent organizations that are not only Biden fans, but are also glaringly out-of-step with the majority of frustrated parents who have been showing up in huge numbers to school board meetings across red and blue America.
According to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, “the National Parents and Families Engagement Council will serve as an important link between families, caregivers, education advocates and their school communities.” Blah, blah, blah.
Personally, I’d have kept the name a bit shorter and gone with “Parent Rubber Stamp” or “Parent Sham” or “Cheerleaders for Biden.” Parent organizations not in lock-step with the Biden administration’s embrace of race essentialism, equity, and gender ideology were not invited to participate. Groups focused on parental rights, curricula transparency, merit, and academic excellence were also excluded.
Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called the whole thing “laughable.” She’s right. Parents, now more than ever before, realize that the education establishment is their adversary, and the White House predictably picked a bunch of status-quo stakeholders to pretend to speak for them. I mean, the National PTA? That organization abandoned parents long ago and shifted its allegiance to the interests of education bureaucrats and teachers unions. Unless you’re contributing to the potluck, they don’t want to hear from you.
Parents across America are up in arms over many different issues that do not break neatly along political lines: the shift away from merit and high academic standards and instruction, the content steeped in critical race theory, critical gender theory, and queer theory (even in the earliest elementary grades), and then add on the draconian COVID-19 measures that kept children’s mouths and noses covered by useless cloth masks for years after they were finally allowed to return to the classroom. Parents know that the damage to some children has been incalculable and, in some cases, irreparable.
One glance at the parent council members and it is obvious that those who do not align with the Biden administration, or the Left more broadly, were not on the invite list. Supporters of critical race theory in schools made the cut; opponents did not. Organization leaders who applauded and defended the letter from the National School Boards Association, in coordination with the White House, that called parents “domestic terrorists” were asked to participate; those unfairly smeared by that lie were not.
No matter how many “listening sessions” they have, a parent council that embraces groupthink and eschews viewpoint diversity is not about actually listening. If it were, the groups most critical of Biden’s K-12 agenda would have at least been invited to join. This entire initiative is a performative and partisan attempt to juice Biden’s poll numbers with parents while disrespecting them and their opinions at the same time.
Erika Sanzi is the director of outreach at Parents Defending Education.
