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This year at least seven states created new programs to allow parents to spend state money on nonpublic schooling and at least 10 have expanded existing programs, according to a pro-school choice organization EdChoice. In its roundup, the group called the year a watershed moment in the movement and declared 2023 the Year of Universal Choice.

In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed her top priority, a sweeping education bill, weeks after taking office. It created a universal school voucher program in the state giving families state money to spend on private schooling, raised teacher pay but made them easier to fire, and banned the teaching of gender identity to young kids as well as indoctrination and critical race theory writ large. Three other states that restricted the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation last year Iowa, Indiana, and North Carolina also created or expanded school choice programs.

The issues have also converged in the Republican presidential primary, where candidates education pitches often combine school choice and parents rights. In a speech at a major gathering of religious conservatives, the Family Research Councils Pray Vote Stand Summit, former president Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, paired attacks on LGBTQ+ inclusiveness in schools with enacting universal school choice as key planks of his proposed plan, as did some of his rivals.

Though the parents rights movement that grew during the pandemic was originally distinct from school choice, and focused more on flipping school boards and working within public schools, the movements have increasingly merged.

School choice has long been a complicated rallying cry that hasnt always fit neatly into American ideological divides. It has significant support from the religious right, who have fought to allow public funds to support religious schools. Libertarians have argued that a market of choice in schools could improve education. Many on the left have also embraced school choice as a way to help ensure children in chronically underserved poor and minority communities receive an equitable education, usually as part of a bigger effort to improve public schools.

The pandemic provided an inflection point, however, as schools faced extended closures, parents got greater insight into their childrens classes, and academic performance overall suffered. Homeschooling, absenteeism, and private schooling increased post-pandemic, while public school enrollment dropped. It was the crucible from which the parents rights movement grew, but it also fueled interest in school choice.

Its more like a perfect storm that suddenly made school choice not just more popular, but a lot of this was awareness, said Erika Sanzi, outreach director for the parental rights group Parents Defending Education and who also supports school choice.

In early 2022, the influential conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation put out a report on education titled, Time for the School Choice Movement to Embrace the Culture War. The paper made the case that pro-school choice groups in the political center and left should set aside their efforts to defend diversity programs or avoid hot-button debates and recognize that parental anger fueled by culture wars could significantly advance their cause.

Whether education reform organizations embrace cultural debates or not, the culture war is here to stay, wrote authors Jay Greene and James Paul School choice advocates are armed with an obvious solution. They should not squander the opportunity to use it.

The argument may not have resonated with groups on the left, like the National Parents Union, that see their visions of social justice and equity in education as incompatible with a parents rights movement that views equity initiatives as discriminatory against white people. But whether intentionally or coincidentally, 2023 brought a significant increase in school choice efforts alongside the surge in interest in curriculum.

I think the synergy between parental empowerment and school choice is a consequence of that [pandemic effect]. Theres much more distrust, theres much more skepticism, said Frederick M. Hess, a director of education policy at the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute. Once parents got distrustful, they started looking more closely and seeing other things they dont like.

Critics of school choice argue that it is a ploy to undermine public schools by taking tax dollars out of the system to fund private or religious schools. They see a similar effort underway in the parents rights movement or perhaps even an ulterior motive of fueling school choice by sullying the reputation of public schools.

Theres an overstep of state lawmakers in some states, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters at a September breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. Number one, to raise their national profile so were talking about them, and number two, because they want to see division in public schools, so they could sell the alternative, which is a private school with tuition paid for by taxpayers.

Jack Schneider, a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, fears that Democrats are playing into conservatives hands if they let Republicans frame them as pushing a leftist version of public schools. Alienating conservative parents is not helpful to Democrats cause, he said.

The right wants the left to make education a partisan issue and to say, there should be schools for Republican kids and schools for Democratic kids, Schneider said. The project for the Republican Party right now is the dismantling of public education.

He continued: What we need to hear a lot more of is how the public schools actually need to be a place where all parents see themselves as belonging.

Those on the left who support some version of school choice, however, say Democrats devotion to public education has created a blind spot causing the failure of some state-funded schools to be overlooked.

Keri Rodrigues, president and cofounder of the National Parents Union, a social justice group that pushes for overhauling schooling and a progressive version of school choice, said some of the programs pushed by Republicans that dont measure improved outcomes for students or tailor vouchers to those with the greatest need are inadequate solutions.

She faults school leaders who have reacted to the parents rights calls for greater transparency, as well as their intimidating tactics at school board meetings, by being even less forthcoming.

If you act like you have something to hide, people are going to assume youre hiding something, even if youre not, and the only disinfectant for this crap is sunlight, said Rodrigues, who also serves as a Massachusetts Democratic Committee member. Stop whining about people wanting other options and make your option a choice worth choosing.

She noted that parents of color and lower-income communities have for decades spoken up at meetings and organized for better schools only to feel ignored, while what she identified as a political campaign on the right has gotten the entire countrys attention.

Its almost offensive that generations of women who have done this work are erased because a political campaign came through, Rodrigues said. We have reduced this down to these folks who have privilege and have been able to jack the mic.

Long term, the culture war fights may fade or shapeshift. But changes to how schools are funded will prove hard to unwind, offering potentially the longest-lasting impact.

Once you get a program going, and you have students and parents who will testify to a Legislature, or you have hundreds of students who are going to show up on the steps and have their picture taken and talk about how this choice program changed their lives, it becomes much more difficult to take it away, Hess said. A lot of the other parental rights [agenda] doesnt create that same kind of constituency but choice does.

Tal Kopan can be reached at tal.kopan@globe.com. Follow her @talkopan.

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The lasting legacy of the education culture wars may be a familiar one: school choice - The Boston Globe

Republicans have been pushing hard on parents rightsmeaning book bans and elimination of any LGBTQ+ representation or serious discussion of race from public schools. Its an effort to simultaneously fuel their base with culture war hysteria and win back the white suburban mom voting bloc with a subject theyre supposed to care about more than any other: protecting their kids.

Its a campaign thats created a great deal of noise and a series of state laws limiting what can be taught. In 2022, as far-right school board candidates took over in many places, it looked promising for Republicans. This week, though, groups like Moms for Liberty hit serious opposition, losing a substantial majority of the races where they endorsed candidates.

There are explanations for this. Most broadly, Americans are rarely quite as hateful as Republicans are banking on these days. But in the wake of Tuesdays elections, its important to talk about something else Republicans may be missing: Parents of school-age kids in 2023 are younger Gen-Xers and, increasingly, elder millennials. Those are, broadly speaking, people who have grown up and lived their whole lives on the other side of the culture war.

Every age group has its hard-right members, of course. The founders of Moms for Liberty are in their early 40s, and theyre hateful, bigoted, frightened people. But when Republicans try to use these issues to peel off swing voters in places like Loudoun County or Fairfax County, Virginia, they may not be on the friendly territory they had imagined. Part of this is the widespread failure to realize that millennials have grown up. People got so used to them being the wacky kids that its only just starting to sink in across the national discourse that millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996, are full-fledged adults now. And theyve brought their formative cultural influences with them.

Theres long been a generational divide on much of this culture-war fodder, and on LGBTQ+ issues in particular. In 2006, a Gallup poll found 50% support for a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, with 47% opposed to it. In the same poll, though, A majority of women aged 18-49 say marriages between homosexual couples should be legally valid. Three years later: A majority of 18- to 29-year-olds think gay or lesbian couples should be allowed to legally marry, while support reaches only as high as 40% among the three older age groups. The 18- to 29-year-olds of 2009 are many of todays parents of school-age children, and 14 years after they reached majority support for marriage equality, the idea that their kids might go to the school library and check out a book with LGBTQ+ characters isnt that scary.

The difference between generations goes well beyond support for same-sex marriage, though. While elder millennials and young Gen-Xers arent at the core of the gender identity revolution being carried out by Gen Z, theyre not baby boomers on this issue, either. Parents of todays K-12 students went to see The Matrix in drovesand then saw its makers come out as trans women. They were at formative ages when Hilary Swank won the best actress Oscar for playing a trans man in Boys Dont Cry. They are of a similar age to prominent trans women like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock. That trans people exist and are fully human is not a brand-new idea for them, and while theres still a long way to go, polls do reflect an age gap on trans issues just as, 15 years ago, there was an age gap on marriage.

Todays parents are also exposed to what their kids are bringing home. Part of what makes Moms for Liberty members so angry is seeing the diversity of thought and identity that their kids are embracing, not so much because of teachers and librarians as because of peers and the broader youth culture. People ages 30 to 49 are more forward-thinking on trans issues than older generations, but the gap is still bigger between that age group and those ages 18 to 29. Its a pretty safe bet that if you polled 12- to 17-year-olds, thered be another jump. Many parents may struggle with how to use they/them pronouns (and be chided by their kids for it), but the ones who arent reacting with reflexive hatred and ragethe ones whose kids can talk to themare catching the edges of that gender identity revolution. Maybe they read some of the massively popular Wings of Fire books, with their panoply of LGBTQ+ characters, to or with their kids. Or were in the room as their kids watched any of the many childrens TV shows with nonbinary or gender-fluid characters, from Netflixs Ridley Jones to Disneys The Owl House.

The Moms for Liberty Republican culture-war appeal isnt just about LGBTQ+ issues, of course. Its also extremely racist. And once again, you dont have to claim that elder millennials and young Xers are immune to racism to know that they are a more racially diverse population than older generations and grew up in an increasingly racially diverse United States of America. Certainly some members of these generations are scared racists in a defensive crouch, enraged by any acknowledgement of Black and brown people in this country (again, see the founders of Moms for Liberty), and heaven knows too many white people in this age range are susceptible to I want equality for everyone but theyre demanding too much-type arguments. But people under 50 are more likely to recognize fundamental inequities in the U.S. and the need for more progress on racial equality. And, as with LGBTQ+ representation, theyre people who grew up seeing enough racial diversity in popular culture to think its weird and wrong that banning efforts are disproportionately targeting books and movies about Black and brown characters.

Todays parents of school-age children had childhoods during which The Cosby Show was the biggest show on TV year after year, then came of age during the 1990s boom in Black movies and sitcoms. Similarly, during their lives, hip-hop became widely popular with white audiences. Many other forms originated by Black musicians had become popular with white audiences over the preceding decades, of course, but in the past, it was more common for white musicians to take up and take over Black-originated forms. While there are plenty of notable white rap and hip-hop artists, it has remained a Black-owned form in a way that rock and roll, for instance, did not as it was popularized by white musicians for white audiences.

Film and television remain disproportionately white, and #OscarsSoWhite went viral in 2015 for good reason. Simple representation is not enough to fully transform peoples politics, but a lot of elder millennials and young Xers are going to bristle at the suggestion that white kids must be protected from depictions of Black and brown people.

Republicans have spent the past two years thinking theyre going to win over white suburban moms with school-based culture wars centered on a so-called parents rights argument. It seems to be a big motivating issue for the younger faction of the Republican base, and it might help the party turn out its own voters. But this arguments reach into the messy ranks of swing voters doesnt appear to be what Republicans hoped for. This weeks election results suggest that as people start paying attention to whats really going on with these policy pushes and the candidates trying to bring them to local school boards, theyre rejecting all of it.

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When Republicans target K-12 parents in culture wars, they don't know who they're dealing with - Daily Kos

Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, the new Mr. Speaker proposed by the Freedom Caucus and anointed by the GOP, is a curiosity to science. Hes composed of anti-matter.

Heres what hes against; he is anti-: the LGBTQIA+ community (he says homosexuality should be criminalized; approves of dont say gay; thinks gay people brought down the Roman Empire (even though historians say it was barbarian invaders)), critical race theory, diversity programs, same-sex marriage, transgender care, freedom of reproductive choice, requiring military personnel to take COVID vaccines, hunger mitigation and nutrition programs, unions, investigating threats against school boards, Head Start, cannabis, fighting health and election disinformation, climate change mitigation, and a lot of science. He denies Joe Biden won the 2020 election; hes xenophobic, misogynistic and a hawk on China and immigration.

But its what he stands for the that keeps me awake at night. Mr. Speaker is an evangelical, white Christian nationalist.

Americas version Christian nationalism holds that our nation is defined by Christianity and was founded as a Christian nation. There should be no separation of church and state. Christianity should inform and guide law-making and governing. Our country should not be defined as a democracy, but, rather, a republicruled by the virtuous, not the majority. God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians.

White Christian nationalism is bogus.

First, Christian nationalism has nothing to do with Christianity. Rather, it is a political deception, a trick, to obtain and retain power by the virtuous few over the unwashed masses. It is antithetical to democracy; it is authoritarian. (It is, for example, the religion of Hungarys dictator Viktor Orbna darling of the right-wing GOPand of Vladmir Putin).

Christian nationalism is absolutely antithetical to Jesus teaching in his Sermon on the Mount and in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Second, Americas framers did not believe in nor did they form a Christian or any one-religion nation. The First Amendment to the federal Constitution has two religion clauses: The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clausethe government shall make no law establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Additionally, Article VI Section 3 of the Constitution prohibits any religious test as a qualification for holding any office or public trust.

James Madison, a key framer of the Constitution, incorporated Section 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (grounded in the free exercise of religion based on ones own conscience) into the drafting of the First Amendmentbecause the Colonies had established state religions and were persecuting and prosecuting those who held different religious beliefs. Madison held that without freedom of religion, there could be no representative government, because establishing one religion over others attacked the fundamental human right of freedom of conscience.

Indeed, in his first term as President, Thomas Jefferson referred to the First Amendment religion clauses as a wall of separation between Church & State.

Among the 56 framers, there was only one member of the clergy. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison were Deists, who, among other things, believed that the supreme being created the universe to operate solely by natural laws, and that after creation he absented himself from the world.

In a peace treaty between the United States and Tripoli, George Washington explicitly stated: The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. . .

Certainly, they had no problem with a diversity of religions (nor do I), but if the framers intended to create a Christian nationas evangelical white Christian nationalists proclaimthey would have explicitly done so. Indeed, the framers intent and purpose was to do precisely the oppositeas expressed in the First Amendment and in Article VI, Section 3.

White Christian nationalism has no grounding in the history of American democracy. It is a false narrative; a toxic ideology. It is wrong.

So, Mr. Speaker is starting off on a whole list of negatives, denials and falsehoods.

But, why should we be surprised?

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Mike Johnson: The Christian Nationalist Speaker Daily Montanan - Daily Montanan

Kevin Frazier is an Assistant Professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University. He previously clerked for the Montana Supreme Court.

The First Amendment protects a marketplace of ideasideally, speakers can freely offer information and the public audience can evaluate that information in light of other ideas, arguments, and proposals. This exchange has a clear goal: the maintenance of a deliberative democracy.

Content generated by AI will soon cause a catastrophic market failure, unless we act now to protect our ability to converse with and learn from one another. Two facts make that impending failure clear: first, in just three years, 90 percent of online content may be generated by AI; and, second, humans struggle--and will increasingly struggle as AI improves--to identify AI-generated speech.

The upshot is that our marketplace of ideas will soon be a marketplace of illusion and confusion. Its time to establish a Right to Reality. Our main marketplaces from Facebook to The New York Times--should have a legal obligation to label the extent to which content is altered by AI or organic--i.e., created by humans.

Though this Right to Reality may seem far fetched, its grounded in the core principles of the First Amendment. By way of example, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that theres a right to receive information. Justice Brennan, writing for the plurality in Board of Education v. Pico, argued that "[t]he right of freedom of speech and press embraces the right to distribute literature, and necessarily protects the right to receive it. The dissemination of ideas can accomplish nothing if otherwise willing addresses are not free to receive and consider them."

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In an information ecosystem polluted by altered content willing addresses lack that freedom. For one, its nearly impossible to receive organic information if it requires sorting through mountains of AI-generated mis- and disinformation. Second, even if one stumbled across organic information in that setting, they may not know it because of the increasing capacity of AI tools to mirror organic content.

Astute readers may contest the Right to Reality on the basis that the First Amendment under the Federal Constitution only protects against government interference. That argument has some weight--though, as an aside, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized First Amendment rights in some settings involving private actors. Nonetheless, to the extent the federal First Amendment is bounded, theres another legal home for the Right to Reality--state constitutions.

Many state constitutions have distinct freedom of speech provisions that have been interpreted to afford greater protections. Case in point, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that freedom of speech and assembly provisions under the state's constitution protected students distributing political leaflets at Princeton, a private university. The court explained that a limited private right of action may exist based on the typical use of the space, whether the public had been invited to use that space, and the purpose of the expressive activity in question. Courts in California, Pennsylvania, and beyond have reached similar conclusions.

Theres little denying that our modern public spheres, including social media platforms, fit the profile of a space that ought to be subject to regulation under such state constitutional speech provisions. Social media platforms are commonly and increasingly used to exchange political views and news, are designed to facilitate such exchange, and are generally open to the public.

The legal viability of the Right to Reality is also bolstered by its minimal impact on expressive activity. Unlike other provisions that have run afoul of freedom of speech protections, the Right to Reality would not remove any content from public forums but merely assist in the evaluation of that content. Its also worth pointing out that the ability to evaluate the accuracy and origin of information serves several societal goals.

Our democracy cannot function if voters cannot confirm whether a candidate or a computer generated a message. Our children will struggle to mature into well-rounded citizens if they solely interact with altered content. Our collective capacity to challenge the status quo will collapse if we outsource our critical thinking to AI tools.

In short, its now or never for a right to reality.

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AI and a marketplace of illusion and confusion - The Fulcrum

A protester holds a placard during a protest against Moms For Liberty in Philadelphia.Matthew Hatcher/Sipa USA via AP

Is the parental rights movement slowing down?

In 2021, there was a broad push after the pandemic from the right to retake education institutions. Across the country, Moms for Libertya sprawling national organization the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled an anti-government extremist groupran school board candidates to challenge inclusive policies and push book bans. The group helped successfully elect conservatives. But now there seems to be less appetite for such radical policies.

There is no better example of this backlash to the backlash than elections this year in Central Bucks, Pennsylvania. Two years ago, three Republican school board candidatestwo of whom were members of a Moms for Liberty local Facebook grouprode to victory to form a 6-3 majority on the Pennsylvania school board. Upon taking control of the prized school district in a key presidential battleground state, Republicans passed a series of controversial policies to challenge and remove books and bar advocacy activities, and, more recently, were pushing for a measure to separate athletic teams on the basis of sex.

But after almost three years of seemingly never-ending negative press coverage and contentious school board meetings, voters in Central Bucks have rejected the new status quo in this weeks elections. All five Democrat school board candidates running as the CBSD Neighbors United slate won their racesincluding a first-time challenger to President Dana Hunterflipping the board.

Last night, the voters of Central Bucks sent a strong message, the groups executive committee wrote after the win. We want leaders who will serve with compassion and common sense. We want leaders who trust and value experts. We want leaders who protect our tax dollars.

I wrote earlier this week about how the Central Bucks school board election has attracted a once-unusual kind of attention and money for a down-ballot race, with more than $600,000 pouring into the dispute, and why the stakes were so high:

In the past three years, contentious disputes about race and gender, personal attacks, calls for resignation, and even paper-throwing-chair-wingingaltercationsseem to have become regular occurrencesat Central Bucks school board meetings. Once a source of pride, the 18,000-student school district sends almost90 percentof graduating high schoolers to colleges and universities and is home to some of thebesthigh schools in Pennsylvania.But it is now a cautionary talein the state and beyondfor what can happen when outside money and national extremist politics seep into local school board elections with effects that drastically change the social dynamics of a community.

In response to what many Central Bucks residents have described as the districts descent into chaos, calls for a return to normal rose ahead of the election. I long for the day that no one talks about us anymore because we are just doing the right thing all the time, Tracy Suits, a former school board president and member of the executive committee for the Neighbors United slate, told me before the election.

This isnt just a victory for me or my fellow candidates, re-elected Democrat Karen Smith said in an email. This is a victory for our students, our teachers, our support staff, and our community. With this vote, we showed that love is stronger than hate and compassion is stronger than fear. And voters made clear they will not be divided or distracted from working togetherall of usto solve the real issues facing all of our students. She vowed to work towards restoring civility to board meetings and revising policies that have so divided us over the last couple of years.

Democrats also swept school board seats in another culture wars-plagued district in Bucks County. In Pennridge, where the Republican-controlled board voted to adopt a curriculum from a conservative education consulting firm and enacted an anti-trans sports policy, Democrat candidates beat their Republican contenders to claim all five open positions, according to unofficial election results.

Paul Martino, a Doylestown venture capitalist who bankrolled the Republican slate Central Bucks Forward that included his wife Aarati, said on Facebook that he was disappointed with the outcome.

We won in 2021 and lost in 2023, he wrote. Thats 1 for 2 if I am doing my math right. We will need to figure out plan for 2025, which is EXACTLY what the Ds did the day they lost in 2021 for 2023. Republicans losses not only in school districts but also for State Supreme Court and other offices, Martino added, bodes poorly for the 2024 nominee for president.

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Pennsylvania Voters Rejected the Culture Wars in School Board ... - Mother Jones