Education intimidation bills are the opposite of parents’ rights

Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill that, in part, allows parents to challenge any decision by a local school board to carry a particular book. But it turns out that the new law might not apply equally to all parents.

When the state’s board of education proposed a rule to implement the book challenge provision, it created an appeals process that would be available only to parents wishing to object to including a particular book in a district’s curriculum. A parent who wants to appeal a decision to ban a book from the curriculum, however, would have no way to do so.

The rule — which was passed by the Florida Board of Education last week — highlights the hypocrisy behind a spate of so-called “parental rights” bills that have been sweeping the country. Rather than protecting the rights of all parents to engage in their children’s education, these bills empower a vocal minority to intimidate teachers, librarians and school districts, while ignoring the views of the majority of families.

In a new report, PEN America — where I am the director of free expression and education programs —  documents nearly 400 such “educational intimidation bills” that have been introduced in state legislatures since January 2021. Rather than directly prohibiting specific concepts or materials, these bills impose vaguely defined standards on curricula and create burdensome mechanisms for public review, fostering a system where teachers and schools are forced to self-censor in order to avoid legal repercussions and public vitriol.

These bills represent a growing national effort to impose new ideological constraints on public education. They are frequently being advanced as technical solutions to increase school transparency, but the impact will be to tilt schools in favor of local ideologues.

They also stand to damage the constructive partnership between parents and teachers that is necessary for public schools to function.

This isn’t happening only in Florida. 

In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed a bill that could impose jail time for librarians providing children with vaguely defined “harmful” material. (Portions of that law have been temporarily blocked by a federal court.) A bill proposed in Virginia would have required schools to put every newly purchased book or magazine up for a vote from parents. Bills proposed in Missouri, Alaska and Oklahoma would have required school districts to make large volumes of training and curricular materials available for public inspection.

These bills are similar for a reason. Many are based on model legislation put forward by a small handful of conservative think tanks and activists. Although legislators often couch these proposals as serving “parental rights,” they also frequently admit their censorious aims. One Kansas state representative justified one such bill as “kind of a slick little way” of preventing critical race theory from being taught in schools.

This flurry of legislation has created an atmosphere of anxiety and second-guessing for teachers and school staff. 

A longtime school librarian in Virginia told PEN America that the current atmosphere around book banning makes teachers “afraid in general.” She herself had been called a “porn peddler” in a public meeting, and one Facebook commenter said that she should be “stoned to death.”  

An art teacher in Tennessee has reported no longer teaching students about the art of Frida Kahlo and Keith Haring because she cannot do so without discussing sexual orientation and gender identity, important contexts for their work. 

It’s no wonder that Florida is struggling with a growing number of teacher vacancies, and that teachers around the country are considering leaving the profession. This erosion of trust between families and educators stands to hurt every student and every parent of a student in public schools.

Contrary to the claims of many “parental rights” activists, a recent national survey found that 77 percent of parents thought that their local school district placed the right amount or too little emphasis on the history of slavery and racism. But this chilled climate is nonetheless driving some families out of public schools. Nearly half of the Florida LGBTQ parents recently surveyed by the UCLA School of Law said they had considered leaving the state because of DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which is both an educational intimidation bill and an educational gag order. Some Black parents in Florida have withdrawn their children from public schools because of attacks on the teaching of Black history.

Our current laws provide a robust infrastructure for parents to engage in their children’s education, through parent-teacher conferences, parent-teacher associations and other partnerships between home and school. But that is not what the “parents’ rights” movement wants.

Instead, as the new book ban appeal process in Florida makes clear, these activists are seeking to use legislation to make it easier for local ideologues to get their way and exert control over the information and ideas that are accessible to everyone.

If more concerned parents and citizens don’t make their voices heard on these issues soon, they may soon find they are left with little voice in these matters at all. 

Jonathan Friedman is director of free expression and education programs at PEN America.