If there is one thing I learned while serving as president of the Virginia Board of Education for Gov. George Allen, it was this: No one cares more about a student’s academic and personal flourishing than parents. Sadly, however, this commonsense approach to education is increasingly uncommon in the commonwealth. Concerned parents in Virginia and across America are in an uproar over out-of-control school boards and administrators like those in Loudoun County — and they should be.
Something is deeply broken in our education system when a boy in a skirt can rape a girl, as happened this year in Loudoun County, Virginia, while school leaders covered it up, refusing to disclose the incident even when asked about it. For ideological extremists to smear parents who dared to speak out as “domestic terrorists” is abhorrent and yet another sign of the cultural decay that pervades the way children are educated.
Here in Virginia, the Left promotes teaching critical race theory, which teaches children that they are either racists or victims of racism based on their skin color. Some history teachers also use the 1619 Project curriculum, which seeks to indoctrinate students with the belief that America was founded to promote slavery. And other leftists maintain that boys who feel like girls should be allowed to invade the privacy of young women by using girls’ bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms. To call all of this educational malpractice would be an understatement.
Still, it all flows from a hubris-filled belief by some Virginia leaders that educational bureaucrats and radical ideologues know best how to control young minds and indoctrinate them with “woke” values. Indeed, many of these leftist educational activists seem to harbor antipathy for the commonsense American values undergirding traditional families. As they see it, better to sideline “backward” parents with their pro-America, pro-faith, and pro-freedom values and make the government a co-parent. This bizarre view gets things exactly backward: Parents need to have more say about their children’s educations, not less.
Here’s the good news: We know what works when it comes to producing strong educational and personal outcomes for children. When conservatives ran Virginia, we loved and welcomed hearing from parents. I spent weeks driving across the state, eager to hear from parents about our work to beef up classroom academic standards and then test that knowledge for thousands of children in public schools all over Virginia.
We didn’t stop there. Responding to parents, we shifted the curriculum and testing from social studies to rigorous and truthful history. We focused on the basic knowledge educated citizens must learn in school, including English, math, science, and history. The tests we created focused on knowledge and facts, not feelings. That’s what Virginia parents told us they wanted for their children, and we gave it to them.
Parents still want academic rigor, safety, and commonsense education for their children. For local school board members to avoid parent feedback speaks to a level of arrogance and a “we know what’s best” mentality that is at the heart of so much that ails education today. Parents have too little say and involvement in children’s education already. Anything that adds a chilling effect to it is anti-education. What’s more, taxpaying parents have every right to ensure educational dollars benefit their children.
To be sure, when you serve on a school board, you will encounter opposition to some of your decisions. But the answer should not be to silence others. Rather, it should be to listen to other viewpoints and see if they are appropriate or helpful. When boards hear increasing parental criticism, that isn’t the time to bring in the FBI. It is a time to pause and listen more carefully.
That doesn’t mean citizens never overstep. As president of the state board of education, I had a stalker. He followed me all around the state, attended many speeches I gave, and was always present at our Virginia Board of Education meetings in Richmond. This stalker followed me to my car, and one excellent member of the Department of Education staff kindly stayed by my side at many of these events until I got into my car and drove off.
The stalker never touched me but hovered close, made inappropriate comments, and called my office asking what time I got off work and to talk with me. I was anxious about this and finally called the police, who advised me not to avoid talking to him. They told me that when he calls, I ought to confront him and tell him how his behavior disturbs me. I did that, and it ended.
Thankfully, events like that are rare. And compared to my years at the apex of the educational establishment, including serving in President Ronald Reagan’s administration at the Department of Education, today’s battle over politically motivated education policy demands far more parental involvement, not less. Schools have usurped an ever-greater role in the lives of our children. Parents shouldn’t abdicate their responsibilities to their offspring. They should be more vigilant and involved than ever before.
In my book, How to Raise a Conservative Daughter, I stress the importance of parental involvement in the growth and development of children. I tell how several decades ago, parents knew that most teachers and school administrators shared their values. But that is not the case today. It’s up to parents to oppose the radical indoctrination in so many schools today. And that’s why the Left is determined to shut parents out.
The best educators and leaders want to hear from parents. They understand their role is not to co-parent but instead provide students with a well-rounded education. Radicals’ demands to run a child’s educational life without parent input is ludicrous. It is time for Virginia leaders to listen to parents and stop shutting them out and condemning parents as akin to terrorists.
Michelle Easton is president of the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women.
