Trump’s Win Bolsters ‘Parents Rights’ Movement in America’s Public Schools

The victory of President Trump in the 2024 election is a win for the “parents rights” movement in America’s public schools, as a slew of conservative educational policies and their champions saw successes on the November 5 ballot.The conservative political organization, Moms for Liberty, is so far celebrating 44 school board wins in their target states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, as part of its efforts to promote “parental rights” and subvert progressive politics on local school boards across the country.Moms for Liberty spent more than $3 million to target voters in those battleground states, generating “record high” early voting turnout for women, moms, and those with little to no voting record. The organization endorsed a total of 84 candidates in local school board and elected superintendent races across 13 states, and many votes are still being tabulated. “President Trump has been given a mandate by the American people,” the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice, tells the Sun. “I think parents know that Washington’s just gotten too big. Parents trust President Trump to put them back in the driver’s seat when it comes to their children’s education.”Another parental rights group that aims “to liberate public education from indoctrination,” the 1776 Project PAC, asserts that more than 60 percent of the candidates it endorsed won this election, with a total of 250 school board victories since 2021. The organization’s success was particularly striking in the deep blue state of Maryland, where their conservative candidates faced outsized spending campaigns by the Democratic opponents and teachers unions. “These wins show that Americans are sick of the left’s education policies that indoctrinate our children in woke ideology but never teach our kids how to read,” the head of coalitions and candidate recruitment for the 1776 Project PAC, Aiden Buzzetti, tells the Sun. “We are ecstatic about these wins in Maryland, and we are excited to help make American kids read again. But this is just the start of our fight. Bad teachers, watch out.” More than 21,000 school board seats came up for election in 2024 across America’s more than 13,000 public school districts. Given the scale of the candidate pool and the minimal, if any, national attention the races receive, it’s difficult to track the results and determine if candidates endorsed by progressive groups and teacher’s unions gained more or less seats than those endorsed by conservative groups advocating for what Ms. Justice describes as “education freedom.”What is clear is that the center of gravity in education policy is beginning to drift toward the center after being firmly pegged on the left of the political spectrum for decades. “In 2021 it felt like progressive orthodoxy was on the rampage,” a senior fellow and director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Frederick Hess, tells the Sun. “Four years later, I think it feels like the policy frames have dramatically shifted.”Trump, after campaigning on an education platform that favored restricting schools’ ability to push certain views of gender, sexuality, and race without parental consent, triumphed with parents this election. Among surveyed voters who live with children younger than 18, 53 percent said they voted for Trump, compared to 44 percent who favored Vice President Harris, according to CNN exit polls. This 9 percent GOP lead was a flip from 2020, when that same cohort of voters gave President Biden a 6 percent margin.The partisan divide on education policy maps onto differences in educational attainment. Education reform and advocacy has long been driven by college graduates, for college graduates. Trump, having won the vote of most non-college educated voters, appears to be subverting this power hierarchy, with his allies in education activism seeming to appeal to a broad range of the American electorate. Some Democrats are even abandoning their previous policy positions pertaining to America’s youth. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s win, two House Democrats, Congressmen Tom Suozzi and Seth Moulton, voiced opposition to biological boys competing in girls’ sports. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” Mr. Moulton told the New York Times.That comment has sparked backlash. The Boston Globe reported on Tuesday that the chairman of the Tufts political science department, David Art, subsequently pushed to limit internship opportunities with Mr. Moulton’s office, though Tufts has refuted that report. It’s worth noting to critics of Mr. Moulton that his concerns are mainstream: 69 percent of Americans polled by Gallup say that transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.Progressive politics, of course, still have a stronghold on many state and local school boards. At Chicago, for example, four teachers union-backed candidates, three pro-school choice candidates, and three independent candidates are prevailing in their campaigns to join the 21-member Board of Education. While final ballots are still being counted, in one district, the Chicago Teachers Union-endorsed candidate, Jennifer Custer, is holding a close lead over her opponent, Michelle Pierre, who is a champion of school choice and budget transparency.Meanwhile, in Florida, an effort to require school board candidates to disclose their political party failed to pass on November 5. By providing a mechanism for identifying candidates whose names few voters recognize, Amendment 1, according to its proponents, would have helped inform everyday voters, not just unions and their allies, about the candidates on the ballot. It also would have made it easier for education advocates to mobilize around school board elections.School board races are plagued by low turnout: Only 5 to 10 percent of voters mark their ballots for school board candidates, who tend to appear at the bottom or on the back of their ballots, according to the National School Boards Association. The matter is made worse by the fact that many of the races take place off-cycle in the spring, when teachers unions dominate turnout. “The people who really know what school board candidates stand for are the folks who work for the school district,” Mr. Hess says, “because they have a slate of candidates endorsed by the employees or the teachers association.”Amendment 1 to the Florida constitution grabbed 54.92 percent of voters, shy of the 60 percent that was required for it to pass. Yet given this strong public showing, Governor DeSantis could potentially send a bill endorsing partisan elections to the Florida state legislature.Ms. Justice expresses her optimism that a Trump administration will oversee federal tax credits for parents with homeschooled children and overall economic improvements, particularly lower inflation. “Getting America back on track will be good for American families, which will mean better student outcomes,” Ms. Justice says. “Parental involvement is the number one driver of student success. There is nothing that a public education system can do that replaces an involved, engaged parent in their children’s education.”

Trump’s Win Bolsters ‘Parents Rights’ Movement in America’s Public Schools

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