By Stanley Kurtz
Tuesday, January
11, 2022
Just about everyone agrees that Virginia
governor Terry McAuliffe made a disastrous political error when he said during
his failed reelection campaign, “I don’t think parents should be telling
schools what they should teach.” “Deadliest political gaffe of the year” and “top listing in the Hall of Fame
of Political Blunders” were typical pundit takes at the time. A couple months after the
election, when 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones echoed McAuliffe’s
parents-keep-out remarks, some warned that the “Democrats’ education lunacies” mean “a lot more .
. . losing ahead.”
But what if McAuliffe’s plan to cut
parents out of their children’s education turns out to be more than an isolated
gaffe? What if, on top of cheers from radicals such as Hannah-Jones, every
sitting Democratic governor and Democratic state representative in the country
were to cast an on-the-record vote to cut parents out of a say over the
curriculum at their local school? Several such votes have already happened, in
fact, and more will be taken in state legislatures this year.
I’m not talking about votes on bills that
bar critical race theory (CRT) from K–12. I’m talking about state laws that
mandate curriculum transparency — new laws detailed enough to require public
Internet posting not only of textbooks and reading assignments, but also of
teacher lesson plans, teacher handouts, accounts of political-advocacy
exercises known as “action civics,” and other similar material generally hidden
from parents.
The Goldwater Institute has just released
the “Sunlight in
Learning Act,” model legislation that represents the
state of the art in K–12 curriculum transparency, combining prior efforts of
both Goldwater and the Manhattan Institute. Goldwater’s Sunlight in Learning
Act is going to kick the curriculum transparency issue into high gear
nationally. The new model will likely inspire bills in many states. Every time
it does, Democrats who vote against curriculum transparency, as they did with
depressing regularity in 2021, will effectively be repeating — on record —
McAuliffe’s gaffe. Here’s why.
Parents can’t have a say over what happens
in their children’s schools if they don’t know what’s being taught. Sadly,
classroom teaching is largely a black box. Vague state education standards and
local curriculum guidelines allow individual principals, curriculum coaches,
and teachers to effectively tweak and control the great majority of classroom
content. In theory, states and school districts — i.e., the public, through its
elected representatives — decide what is to be taught in our schools. In
practice, a lack of information and oversight cedes de facto control of
curriculum to the whim of individual staffers. A single diversity officer or
teacher can turn almost any topic itemized in state standards or local
curriculum guidelines into a woke political exercise or sermon, and it’s been
happening with increasing frequency.
Teachers’ unions and professional
organizations regularly approve resolutions urging the injection of politics
into the classroom. Schools of education train for politicized teaching (always
leftist, of course). Parents can’t push back against these trends unless they
know what’s actually happening in classrooms. Ditto for state laws on critical
race theory, action civics, or any other curriculum-related matter. Thousands
of teachers have actually pledged to violate the new state CRT laws. Those teachers can’t be held to
account if we don’t know what they do in the classroom.
In short, curriculum-transparency laws are
essential, not only for enforcing state laws on CRT, action civics, and other
specific topics, but for allowing any meaningful parental say over the content
of education. Without a proper curriculum-transparency law — one that requires
the posting of lesson plans, handouts, web-based material, and advocacy
exercises, rather than just textbooks — teachers will easily flout state
education laws while evading the wishes of parents and school boards to boot.
That means a vote against a
state-of-the-art curriculum-transparency bill is a vote to prevent parents from
knowing what’s happening in their own children’s classroom. A vote against a
new-generation curriculum-transparency bill is also a vote to stop parents from
“telling schools what they should teach” — exactly what Terry McAuliffe and the
creator of the 1619 Project want. In fact, Democratic state legislators and
governors have already worked to block K–12 curriculum-transparency bills in
several states. In doing so, they have effectively gone on record in support of
McAuliffe’s notorious gaffe. Yet so far, voters barely know that curriculum
transparency is in play in their state.
Republicans ought to be making K–12
curriculum transparency into an issue on the scale of CRT. They should do this,
first, because anti-CRT laws require transparency if they’re to be effective,
and second, because curriculum-transparency laws pose a pure test of parental
rights to informed influence over the content of the school curriculum. A vote
against curriculum transparency is a vote to keep the public in the dark, to
shut out parents, and to allow teachers to politicize the classroom. Even
voters who may know little of CRT will immediately be struck by the legitimacy
and importance of teacher transparency. For many, a politician’s stand against
a parent’s right to know what’s happening in the classroom may be even more
off-putting than a politician’s refusal to vote against CRT. K–12 curriculum
transparency should henceforth be a top-tier issue for state legislators and governors
everywhere — not above CRT in priority, but alongside it.
The new wave of K–12
curriculum-transparency legislation is largely the brainchild of the Goldwater
Institute’s Matt Beienburg, who floated the first proposal early in 2020. State laws before that had allowed for public
examination of curriculum material, yet typically under time and place
restrictions that effectively shut out working parents. Beienburg had the
bright idea of posting curriculum materials on the Internet, including items
that usually escape scrutiny — including “supplemental” materials and activities
beyond those found in districts’ officially adopted textbooks. Such materials
are where the politicization often hides.
Working in Arizona, where school choice is
widespread, Beienburg called for the annual posting of curriculum materials.
That way parents could survey curriculum content when deciding which school to
choose. At states began to pass CRT laws, however, the need for more frequent
posting, and other changes, emerged. At that point, Christopher Rufo, James
Copeland, and John Ketcham of the Manhattan Institute issued a new transparency
model that built on and strengthened Beienburg’s. Rufo, of course, is the
leading national critic of critical race theory, so the Manhattan Institute’s
transparency model worked to maximize the effectiveness of laws barring CRT.
To create a blended and expanded version
of both models, I consulted with Beienburg to add provisions disclosing the
political-advocacy exercises and politicized internships that go under the name
of “action civics.” I have written model
legislation barring both CRT and action civics,
and I consider Goldwater’s new Sunlight in Learning Act an indispensable
companion to my own model bill. If bans on K–12 CRT and action civics are to work,
transparency will be essential.
Goldwater’s Sunlight in Learning Act,
which blends the earlier Goldwater Institute and Manhattan Institute models,
has all the bells and whistles. Its requirements for disclosure are
comprehensive, yet respect the proprietary nature of copyrighted material. Not
only what transpires in the classroom, but the content of teacher-training sessions,
must be disclosed. (CRT is at least as widespread in teacher training as in the
classroom.) Action-civics exercises, projects, and political internships must
also be made transparent. Provision for continuous updates allows teachers to
develop new materials, while ensuring prompt disclosure after use. Enforcement
provisions allow for investigations and, if necessary, lawsuits when it is
alleged that curriculum material has been improperly withheld from disclosure.
Note that many schools already require teachers
to submit their lesson plans and related material to administrators. It takes
very little additional effort to post the same material on a public website. In
fact, as some educators have already pointed out, posting materials online will
make life easier on teachers, as they will be able to see what
resources their most successful peers are using, instead of spending hours
searching the Internet for new content. No need to reinvent the wheel.
The Sunlight in Learning Act is now the
most up-to-date and comprehensive version of curriculum-transparency
legislation. The 2021 state-legislative session, however, saw several bills
inspired by the initial Goldwater Institute transparency model, or other
similar proposals. A bill passed the North Carolina House on a near-party-line vote but
languished in the North Carolina Senate, likely because a CRT bill (which did
not become law) took priority. The Republican-majority Wisconsin State
Legislature passed a good transparency bill on a strict party-line vote, after which
Democratic governor Tony Evers vetoed it. Arizona passed a Goldwater-inspired
transparency bill through the Republican-controlled Senate on a strict party-line
vote, after which the bill stalled in the nearly evenly divided Arizona House.
Fifteen Illinois Republicans, led by Representative Steven Reick, sponsored a Goldwater-based transparency bill, but it was held up without a hearing in the Democrat-dominated
Illinois legislature. Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Tom Wolf vetoed a transparency bill passed by the state’s Republican-controlled
legislature. The Pennsylvania bill was not as thorough in its disclosure
requirements as the Goldwater Institute or Manhattan Institute models.
Pennsylvania should consider a new bill based on Goldwater’s Sunlight in
Learning Act this year.
All signs for the 2022 state-legislative
session are that Republicans will back transparency bills, while Democrats will
oppose them. It shouldn’t be that way, of course. Curriculum transparency and
the parental involvement it enables ought to be a point of bipartisan agreement.
No doubt many grassroots Democrats feel exactly that way. Teachers’ unions,
however, bitterly oppose curriculum-transparency bills, and the Democrats are
greatly beholden to those unions.
We cannot rule out efforts by elected
Democrats to show some independence from the teachers’ unions. As the public
turns against school closings for Covid, Democrats have begun to worry that
their ties to the teachers’ unions are driving away voters — especially the
swing suburban-woman demographic. Opposing curriculum transparency at the
behest of teachers’ unions can only aggravate the Democrats’ problem. So maybe
some Democrats will come around, as they should, to the side of parents and
transparency. Let us hope.
Should Democrats continue to block
curriculum transparency, however — and with it the ability of parents to have
some say over the education of their children — they will richly deserve any
electoral comeuppance they receive. Republicans take note. Both substantively
and politically, curriculum-transparency legislation is every bit as important
as laws that bar CRT. Transparency may seem like a “boring” process issue. It
isn’t. Just wait till you see what the new transparency laws produce: a passel
of nightmare curricular smoking guns on CRT, action civics, and other
topics as well. Exposure of harsh truths about our politicized curriculum
will rightly build further support for reform. Good curriculum-transparency
legislation is actually the key to enforcing CRT laws. When it comes to
politics, just watch what Democratic lawmakers who vote against curriculum
transparency have to say when their Republican opponents call them on it.
They’ll be McCauliffe-gaffing from sea to shining sea.
With the release of the Goldwater
Institute’s Sunlight in Learning Act, K–12 curriculum-transparency legislation
has become the next big play in the battle to take back America’s schools.
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