It took about 10 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday afternoon for Keith McNamara and over 1,000 employees at the Department of Education to learn they were officially fired. Signed by Jacqueline Clay, chief human capital officer, the email message thanked them for their service and said Aug. 1 would be their final day. 

“Came awful quick after the news dropped,” said McNamara, who worked as a data governance specialist at the department before he was dismissed during mass layoffs in March. 

The department’s speed appeared to confirm just how eager the Trump administration is to hollow out an agency it says never should have been created in the first place. It was “a shame,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement, that the court had to handle a lawsuit over “reforms” she said voters elected President Donald Trump to deliver. The ruling, she , brings the administration “one step closer to returning education to the states.”

But her words landed like a gut punch to employees who have been on paid leave for months, many of whom viewed the job as a personal mission to open up educational opportunities and protect students’ civil rights. 

“Some people said they cried [as] soon as they saw the [ruling],” said Denise Joseph, a former management and program analyst in the Office of Postsecondary Education.

She was among the first to be placed on administrative leave in January during the initial wave of Department of Government Efficiency cuts. Now, she plans to move on with securing a new job. But her thoughts Monday were with colleagues who had hoped to be reinstated. “It’s not a good day for them, and it’s not a good day for education and our country.”

Elimination of the department is a prize conservatives have been chasing since it opened in 1979. Former President Ronald Reagan attempted to close it shortly after he took office. But the 1983 report, which warned that American students were falling behind their international peers, spurred a larger federal role in education. 

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, he prefers the federal government to have “a little tiny bit of supervision, but very little, almost nothing” over education. “To make sure they speak English, that’s about all we need,” he said.

Monday’s ruling overturned a lower court injunction temporarily halting the layoffs. For now, the opinion gives the administration the green light to continue downsizing the agency without congressional approval, something experts say Trump has little chance of getting.

Lawmakers in favor of closing the agency can use Monday’s ruling to “build the case that fewer people are needed and functions that are necessary could easily be transferred to other agencies,” said David Cleary, a former Republican education staffer for the Senate and now a principal with The Group, a Washington lobbying firm. 

McMahon wasted no time attempting to make that point. On Tuesday morning, she announced that she would begin transitioning career and technical programs, adult education and family literacy to the Department of Labor. The said the move “marks a major step in shifting management of select [Education Department] programs to partner agencies.” 

Transferring student aid to the Treasury Department, and special education to Health and Human Services are among the other proposals.

One former education secretary said it’s “incredibly naive” to think that Trump intends to preserve education programs if he manages to offload them to other agencies.

“The goal is not to have other agencies function. The goal is to break government,” said Arne Duncan, who served as secretary during the Obama administration. “You can’t lose the forest for the trees here, unless you’re just trying to hide from reality.”

The public isn’t sold on the idea either. A from EdChoice, which supports Trump’s school choice agenda, showed that less than half of adults and parents with kids in school are in favor of closing the department. 

But conservatives argue the ruling has forced “serious conversation about what the federal role should be and whether it makes sense to have a cabinet-level department,” said Jim Blew, a founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute and a former department official during Trump’s first term.

The court’s decision doesn’t end the case against the department. The challenging the firings, brought by 21 states and a coalition of districts and unions, still has to work its way through the lower courts — a process that could take many months.

“It is still technically possible for the states to prevail,” said Johnathan Smith, chief of staff and general counsel at the National Center for Youth Law. 

‘Sophie’s choices’

The Supreme Court’s action effectively cuts in a department that had just over 4,100 employees when Trump took office. The Office for Civil Rights, the Institute for Education Sciences, the National Center for Education Statistics, which runs the tests known as the Nation’s Report Card, and Federal Student Aid were programs hardest hit by the combination of firings and voluntary departures.

The secretary promises that the department is still handling its “statutory duties,” but there are signs of from the gutted staff. Even before the White House Office of Management and Budget paused nearly $7 billion in federal funds that were due to states July 1, the department for small, rural schools and kept states waiting on news of their Title I allotment for low-income students. Despite a court order, the department still hasn’t processed to states.

While OCR is now updating a website that lists , it sat dormant for several months after Trump took office. Another page with hasn’t been updated since January. In a , Rachel Oglesby, the department’s chief of staff, said of 5,164 civil rights complaints since March, OCR had dismissed 3,625 — signs, advocates say, that the department has fallen behind on its obligations to protect vulnerable students.

The court’s ruling “doesn’t augur well for the department being able to fulfil its mission,” said McNamara, the data specialist.

Others worry about states’ ability to take the driver’s seat on education, especially when the massive tax and spending package the president signed July 4 puts for health care and nutrition programs on their shoulders. 

“They’re going to be making some Sophie’s choices in terms of what gets funded and what doesn’t. Education is going to be on the chopping block,” said National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues. 

Two states, Iowa and Oklahoma, have asked the department to combine their federal funds into a block grant, an idea several other red states also support. McMahon backs the plan and often like Louisiana and Mississippi, which have made strong progress in reading, to suggest that the federal government should get out the way. But Rodrigues noted that it was federally funded research and a regional education lab that helped make those improvements possible.

Maryland state Superintendent Carey Wright, who oversaw the reforms in Mississippi, didn’t just “sprinkle some literacy dust” over schools to raise proficiency rates, she said. Other red states are benefitting from a federal grant that pays for training, assessment and support from higher education to improve students’ performance in reading. 

The parents union focuses much of its advocacy work at the state level, but Rodrigues said federal leadership is still necessary.

“I don’t know how you make progress without a department, without staff, without a Congress that’s willing to enforce federal law,” she said. 

‘Serious conversation’

The court’s decision came a week after it ruled that Trump could proceed with mass firings at other federal agencies. The , for example, began letting more than 1,300 people go last Friday. But that’s a far larger agency, with over 70,000 employees. The Education Department is the federal government’s smallest. 

As is customary on emergency appeals, the court’s conservative majority offered no explanation for overturning the preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, wrote a 19-page dissent.

“The president must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them,” she wrote. “That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers.”

Mark Schneider, a former director at the Institute for Education Sciences appointed by Trump during his first term, has long advocated for radically restructuring a federal research program that he argued had grown stodgy and resistant to change. But he wonders what McMahon can accomplish with a decimated staff.

“NCES still exists,” he said, referring to the National Center for Education Statistics. “There are three or four people in it. NCER [the National Center for Education Research] still exists. There’s one person in it. So the question is: What happens to that?”

But, he wonders, “Does the department have a plan?” Given the last few months, he said luring quality people back may prove tricky. “Even if you get any authorization to recruit, it’s going to be difficult,” he said.

A future administration could also rebuild the agency if Congress doesn’t eliminate it, but lawmakers would have to appropriate money for that, noted Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. 

To Duncan, the damage would be hard to undo. 

“It’s an assault on K-12, and it’s an assault on higher education,” he said. “… Higher education has been the goose [that] laid the golden egg for decades in the United States and attracted the best and brightest around the world to come here to learn and to create jobs. We’re shutting all that down.”

The 74 Writers Amanda Geduld and Mark Keierleber contributed to this report.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story contained wording that may have implied Title I disbursements to states were late this year. State officials say it was the department’s projected Title I allocations that came months later than usual.

“Even if the feds decide that they’re not going to require statewide assessments, that is not something that I’m going to buy into,” she said. “The moment you lower standards, you do kids a disservice.”

With President Donald Trump on a path to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and revert power back to the states, Wright’s words gave urgency to a burning issue state leaders have been wrestling with for months.

While Education Secretary Linda McMahon has declared it’s “absolutely” necessary to continue the National Assessment of Educational Progress — which allows the public to compare student performance across states — she’s so far been silent on federal requirements for state testing and the need to identify low-performing schools for extra support. The lack of a plan has left some wondering if sending education “back to the states,” as Trump is fond of saying, means abandoning what has been a mainstay of education policy for more than 20 years.  

“This is one of the discussions that the department, the administration, the Senate and House need to talk through,” said Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a right leaning think tank that supports Trump’s agenda. 

A department official during the president’s first term, he argues that the Every Student Succeeds Act, the law that spells out federal requirements for testing and accountability, has had little impact on holding students to high standards. 

“States that do not want to be transparent about their testing results simply aren’t,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, just go and try and find the results for any state.”

As the president’s plan takes shape, some Republicans are trying to remove those annual testing and accountability requirements altogether. Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota reintroduced last week that would not only eliminate the education department, but also repeal ESSA. In exchange for a federal block grant, states would be required to submit student data to the Treasury Department, complete an annual audit and follow civil rights laws — but not conduct annual tests.

The rationale is clear, said Charles Barone, senior director of the Center for Innovation at the National Parents Union: Maintaining some federal authority over testing and accountability could imply there’s still a role for the department.

“Sen. Rounds’ bill simply has federal programs as money streams,” he said. “No policy attached.”

Since the pandemic, a handful of states, like Oklahoma, and , have rolled back expectations for passing state tests. The changes are likely to result in more students reaching grade-level targets even if they haven’t learned more. The trend has revived debate over the “honesty gap” — the discrepancy between NAEP’s higher standard for proficiency and the often lower bar set by states. 

Others, like and education Secretary Aimee Guidera are phasing in tougher assessment and accountability systems. To Blew, that shows the federal government should just stay out of the way. 

“At the end of the day, states are going to determine this,” he said. “Let’s give them the freedom to do that.”

Passed a decade ago, ESSA requires states to test all students in third through eighth grades in reading and math, to assess students once in high school and to ensure at least 95% of students participate in testing. States also have to break down results by race and for different student groups, including those in poverty, English learners and students with disabilities. 

The major components meet the threshold of what Barone describes as the “” for accountability. 

Testing every student allows parents to get assessment results for their own children, which can then be used to determine where students are struggling or if they need more challenging work. 

Disaggregating the results shines a light on how districts serve historically marginalized students — data that is especially important to policymakers and advocacy groups. Finally, a common test allows for apples-to-apples comparisons across schools and districts. 

“Over the years, a consensus has formed that you want certain guardrails in place,” Barone said.  

‘A federal backstop’

Observers don’t expect Rounds’ bill to get very far. But some call it a harbinger of a return to the days , the strict accountability law that preceded ESSA. In the 1990s, just a fraction of states tested students every year and many imposed no consequences for failing schools. 

“I think accountability is already at a pretty low point,” said Cory Koedel, an economics and public policy professor at the University of Missouri. “If things go back to the states even more formally, I would just expect that unwinding to complete itself.”

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the education committee, is expected to introduce another proposal to eliminate the education department and revamp the role of the federal government in education. Blew said that bill could be weeks away. 

Democrats and some state leaders warn that dumping federal testing and accountability requirements and issuing block grants would allow states to turn their backs on the neediest students.

“If you get rid of accountability, you’re just essentially giving [states] a blank check,” said Stephanie Lalle, communications director for the Democrats on the House education committee. Federal mandates, she said, are how you push them to “not discriminate and incentivize them to close the achievement gap.”

At a February conference on assessment and accountability in Dallas, Virginia ed secretary Guidera shared data showing how her state’s performance on NAEP steadily improved between 2003 and 2013 — the NCLB years. 

The landmark education law, which set strict testing and accountability requirements in exchange for Title I funds, passed in 2002. Data shows the policy led to nationally, but it quickly became highly unpopular. The law set ambitious goals for all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, but drew considerable pushback from critics who said it led schools to teach to the test. But even if states continue their own testing and accountability systems, Guidera doesn’t want Washington out of the picture.

“We need the federal backstop,” she told The 74. “We have to have high standards, and we need to be honest with ourselves about where every child is.” 

‘A rallying cry’

Opposition to standardized testing comes from both the left and the right. Educators grumble that it eats up too much class time and that results from spring tests come back too late to help students or make adjustments for the fall. Others, , say state tests offer a narrow view of student learning. 

The question is what states would do if the federal government were no longer in the picture. In his conversation with Wright and other experts earlier this month, Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, leaned on a handy metaphor: a motorcycle cop holding a radar gun. 

“What if nobody was checking your speed?” he asked.

State leaders have been thinking about the possibilities.

Rep. Robert Behning, an Indiana state legislator, said he “would be willing to look at other options, like sampling” — giving tests to a random, representative group of students instead of everyone. can be less of a drain on teachers’ and students’ time and still give the public district and school-level results. But the tradeoff is that most parents would be left in the dark about their children’s performance.  

Other state leaders like the idea of spreading assessments rather than building up toward one big test.

“We’ve got better assessments that tell us more about our students,” Eric Mackey, Alabama state superintendent, said during a in March.  

But research shows there are with arriving at a final score for the year and the model might not reduce testing time.

Marion giving state exams every other year, which would allow more time in the intervening years to employ innovative methods like asking students to complete a project to demonstrate their learning.

Marianne Perie, an assessment expert who advises states on test design, said she wouldn’t be surprised if Oklahoma completely stopped giving statewide assessments. In March, state Superintendent Ryan Walters questioned the integrity of the 2024 results, even though they were included in for districts and schools.

But in other states like Tennessee and Mississippi, annual tests have been “a rallying cry” for parents and policymakers, said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who tracks states’ . 

Such states “have championed their gains in the last few years,” especially in English language arts, she said. 

Tennessee, for example, was among the first to bounce back from pandemic-era learning loss. At the same time, the fact that roughly 60% of third graders still scored below grade level in reading was worrisome enough to lawmakers that they passed a law requiring students to be retained or get extra help over the summer and retake the test. 

Remote learning during the pandemic and in-depth reporting on poor literacy instruction has also motivated more parents to push for improvements.

“Parents are increasingly demanding accountability from their educational system, which will make sunsetting these assessments more complex,” Oster said.

Roughly value state assessments and think they should be used to guide support for struggling schools and students, according to a National Parents Union poll.

‘Come up with something better’ 

If the federal government does hand more control over assessment and accountability to states, Barone said it’s far more likely to happen through waivers from McMahon than legislation. 

ESSA allows the secretary to excuse states from annual assessments. That’s what former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did in 2020 during the pandemic. She waived the accountability provisions for both 2020 and 2021. Barone sees no reason why McMahon wouldn’t do the same. 

A former Democratic staffer in the House, he thinks it would be hard to improve on the existing testing regimen. But even he agrees that the accountability side of the equation hasn’t led to measurable progress in how states support — and attempt to turn around — their most troubled schools. 

The law requires states to identify the lowest-performing 5% of schools, analyze why they’re struggling and adopt a proven , like coaching teachers or changing leadership. But a report found that less than half of states were complying with those requirements.

“There’s not a lot of evidence that even those that are doing it are doing it well,” Barone said. Maybe Trump’s planned overhaul of the federal role in education, he said, is an opportunity to “come up with something better.”

Linda McMahon, who co-chairs his transition team and previously led the WWE, or World Wrestling Entertainment, has known him for 30 years, served in his first administration, and since 2019, has been laying the foundation for his return to the White House. 

A former Connecticut State Board of Education member who led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019, McMahon would likely shift the focus of the department toward workforce development while also pursuing key policy priorities, like . 

Those who defend traditional public schools see McMahon’s nomination as an effort to eliminate important civil rights protections for students and slash funding for high-poverty schools, but some advocates saw room for her to make a positive impact.

“I don’t hate it,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. “Having an education secretary that is focused on economic mobility and getting our kids prepared for the jobs and the economy in the future is not a bad thing.” 

In choosing McMahon, 76, Trump passed over others who expressed interest in the post. They include Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, and Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters, who some say has been “auditioning” for the job for over a year by enacting policies in line with Trump’s “anti-woke” platform. Just last week, Walters mandated that schools show a for the president-elect.

Meanwhile, McMahon — as board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a far-right — has been integral to shaping the incoming administration’s agenda. The organization argues that parents should have over their children’s education, including the ability to review all curriculum materials. But Trump’s agenda also includes wiping out the U.S. Department of Education, a goal that could become McMahon’s primary charge.

In a statement, he said McMahon would lead efforts to “send education BACK TO THE STATES.”

Advocates who have worked to stem the conservative effort to win school board seats and limit progressive ideas in curriculum said Trump’s goals are clear, regardless of who he tapped to lead the department.

“They all seem identical policy-wise,” said Katie Paris, founder of Red Wine and Blue, a network of suburban women who support moderate candidates for office. She said she expects McMahon to be “less bombastic” than culture warriors like Justice or Walters, “but just as dangerous for kids.”

The nation’s largest teachers union said McMahon, like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during Trump’s first term, will undermine public education.

“Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools,” National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in .

McMahon is also likely to face questions about , filed in October, in which she and her husband Vince are accused of knowing about and not stopping Mel Phillips, WWE’s ringside announcer in the 1980s and ‘90s, from sexually abusing young “ring boys” who ran errands related to . Vince McMahon has said the claims are false. 

He also as executive chairman of TKO, which owns WWE, amid allegations of with a former employee. He has denied the accusations. 

‘Consolation prize’

The fact that McMahon initially expressed interest in leading the was a red flag for Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

“Treating the Department of Education as a consolation prize demonstrates the low priority that President Trump places on the issue,” he said. 

It was during the years Petrilli served in the education department, under former President George W. Bush, that McMahon said she became interested in education. She learned that her local schools near Greenwich, Connecticut, weren’t meeting expectations under No Child Left Behind, the federal law that tied accountability to improvement on test scores. 

“I​​t’s a very wealthy community. We pay a great deal of our taxes towards education,” former football coach Lou Holtz, who hosts a sponsored by America First Policy Institute. “How can that happen?”

Through her connections with then-Gov. Jodi Rell, she began visiting public, charter and private schools. And in 2009, Rell appointed her to finish out a term on the state board, a seat she resigned in 2010 to run for the U.S. Senate, losing to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

“I said ‘I’m certainly not in the world of education. I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for,’ ” McMahon told Holtz. “[Rell] said ‘I’m looking for exactly who you are, somebody from the outside.’ ” 

Outgoing Secretary Miguel Cardona served as education commissioner in Connecticut from 2019 to 2021 but didn’t overlap McMahon’s short tenure on the state board.

In 2006, McMahon also launched WWE’s , in which celebrity wrestlers promote literacy through posters and public service announcements. 

She lost a second bid for the Senate, against Democrat Chris Murphy, in 2012. 

Like Trump in his first term, she touts , but has said force businesses to spend more money on training. And she has advocated for bipartisan legislation that would extend Pell Grant eligibility to students in workforce training programs, not just traditional colleges.

“Congress should recognize the effort and commitment of American workers by funding the skills training and technical education most laborers rely on,” she wrote in an .

Rodrigues, with the National Parents Union, described McMahon as someone who would be “an education secretary with some serious juice” and would also have a “direct line” to the president because of her long-time connections with him. McMahon is also a leading having given $ as of July.

“It’s going to be interesting to see an education secretary who’s going to have the ability, and frankly the balls, to call the president and get some things done in the education system,” Rodrigues said.

“We can’t exit this decade with students, in particular low-income students, performing worse than they were performing when they entered the decade,” said Kevin Huffman, CEO of Accelerate, a nonprofit funding academic recovery efforts. “My biggest fear is just that people will use the Department of Education as a battering ram for other issues and not use it as a force to take on academic outcomes for kids.”

The Republican nominee, declaring this the “golden age of America,” in battleground states, like Georgia and Florida, than he did in 2020. As expected, Republicans flipped the Senate and will hold at least a 52-seat majority, with a few races left to call. Control of the House remains undecided. 

Observers expect Trump to immediately nullify the Biden administration’s Title IX rule that extends protections against discrimination to LGBTQ students. 

Those who campaigned for Trump, and agree with his promises to end in schools, celebrated his comeback.

“American parents voted for their children’s future,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative Moms for Liberty advocacy group, . Her name is already among those being tossed around as a possible . She told The 74 that she “would be honored to serve the next president of the United States of America.”

Most clues about Trump’s early priorities come from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s , or Project 2025. In addition to eliminating Title I funding for low-income students and Head Start for preschoolers from poor families, the plan would remove references to LGBTQ people throughout federal policy.

But even if Washington ends up with a GOP trifecta and federal appointees handpicked by Heritage, the president-elect might not be able to deliver on some of his more bold promises to dismantle the education department and of illegal immigrants.

“Some of this rhetoric will be tempered with reality once the administration changes,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. “This is a president that we are very accustomed to. I understand people are nervous; they’re very concerned. But when it comes down to it, there’s also the reality of governing.”

Eliminating the education department, for example, would require 60 votes in the Senate and would likely be unpopular in the House as well, even if Republicans are still in control, said David Cleary, a former Republican Senate education staffer now working for a left-leaning lobbying firm.

“The votes wouldn’t materialize,” he said.

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, added that “draconian cuts” in spending would also be difficult to pass. That’s why Trump is expected to accomplish some of his conservative agenda through executive orders.

“Let’s assume that there is no grand reawakening to the problems that America faces and people stay in their partisan foxholes,” Cleary said. “Trump will have to take a page out of [President Joe Biden’s] playbook and do a lot by executive action and regulatory plans.”

That would include halting enforcement of Biden’s Title IX rule — which, because of litigation from Republican-led governors, currently applies to only 24 states. Officials would likely restart the process of restoring the 2020 regulation completed under former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, which narrowed the definition of sexual assault and expanded due process rights for the accused.

One LGBTQ advocacy organization called Trump’s victory “an immediate threat.”

“Today, many in our community feel a profound sense of loss and concern for the future,” Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, said in a statement, pointing to Heritage’s Project 2025 as the blueprint for how Trump would roll back policies that allow trans students to play on sports teams or use restrooms that match their gender identity. “With these changes, our young people could face increased discrimination, reduced access to safe spaces and diminished legal recognition.”

Trump, a and, at 78, the oldest candidate ever elected president, is also expected to push for private school choice, perhaps along the lines of the $5,000 that passed a House committee in September. But despite the GOP’s enthusiasm for vouchers and education savings accounts, which allow parents to use public funds for private school tuition and homeschooling expenses, some advocates would like to see greater support for the charter sector.

Petrilli, a self-described “never-Trumper,” said he’s worried about returning to “the political dynamics” of Trump’s first term, which didn’t benefit charter schools.

“Reform-oriented Democrats were sidelined or silenced,” he said. “Given that there are a lot of kids in blue states like California, New York, and Illinois who desperately need high-quality educational options, this would be a terrible development.”

But Rodrigues sees some bright spots in Republicans’ focus on parental rights and school choice. “Those things can be positive when not taken to the extreme,” she said.

She’s encouraged by the prospect of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana becoming chair of the Senate education committee, where he has already highlighted the importance of improving . 

While the National Parents Union has had close interaction with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and the White House, she said leaders have had ongoing “deep conversations” with those on both sides of the aisle.

“Progress will be made for children in any and all conditions, regardless of what happens in the House and the change up in the Senate,” she said. “I think the depth of our relationships are not confined to one particular party.”

The results come from a that polled 1,518 parents of K-12 public school students conducted by the National Parents Union between May 7-11. 

“We can point to the fact that parents still feel good about schools,” said founding president and The 74 contributor Keri Rodrigues “[and] still feel good about teachers … There’s a lot of bright spots around the fact that parents are still fully invested in public education and that — contrary to what we might be hearing from the voucher folks — that there’s no fear of parents completely walking away from America’s public education system and moving towards ‘do-it-yourself’ methods.” 

Vouchers, which let parents use taxpayer money to send their kids to private schools, have in the last several years. At the same time, more parents are experimenting with alternative schooling methods, including homeschooling and microschools. 

The majority of parents (72%) also expressed confidence in their kids’ principals and schools for meeting overall expectations. 

But, according to the survey — dubbed “The Parent Report Card” — as parents considered the outer echelons of the education system, their confidence began to wane. Just over half rated their superintendents and school boards favorably, a figure that continued to drop for state governors (45%), U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (32%) and President Joe Biden (33%). That last number is lower than the president’s overall 37% approval rating among respondents nationwide, according to a Reuters/Ipsos released June 28.

Rodrigues said this is evidence of the disconnect between families and those in power at the state and federal level. 

“I always encourage [elected officials] to go back and listen to the people who are experiencing what is going on in classrooms: our young people,” Rodrigues said. “If you have a problem with parent and family engagement, talk to the parents and families. They will tell you why they’re not engaged. [You] need to do the work, too.”

There has been a significant gap — averaging 31 percentage points — between parents’ favorable views of their own child’s education and Americans’ more critical take on U.S. education at large since at least 1999, according to almost 25 years of The most recent data from last year’s survey saw the second-largest gap to date: 40 points, second only to the 42-point divide in 2000.  

Megan Brenan, senior researcher at Gallup, credits this almost-record setting number to underlying parisian divides, with Republicans expressing the lowest satisfaction with the public education system at large (25%) to date. This also marked the largest gap in history between Democrat and Republican satisfaction, with a 19 percentage point difference. 

“We’re seeing the biggest partisan gaps on a whole lot of measures right now,” she said, reflecting America’s deep polarization. 

According to last year’s Gallup survey, only 36% of Americans are satisfied with K-12 education quality, matching a record low in 2000. Despite this, parents remain mostly pleased with the education their oldest child is receiving, with just over three-quarters reporting they are completely or somewhat satisfied, numbers that reflect historical averages. The vast majority of parents also support their children’s teachers, with the majority rating their performance as excellent (36%) or good (37%).

“This is kind of a pattern that we see over a number of measures where Americans are much more likely to rate national measures lower than their own,” Brenan said. “So we see this with crime: that people say, ‘Oh, crime in the U.S. is at a high, but my neighborhood is fine.’ We see it with their own congressmen. It’s very much like, ‘I hate Congress but my congressman deserves to be re-elected.’ And if you look at the trend in education, then you also see this is something which has held up throughout …. I think it’s just [that] they can relate more to their own personal situation than they can to the national picture.”

One reason why may be that schools are often the centers of communities, said Joshua Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University. 

“That’s where you start to see this point of personal contact that matters to people in terms of what they want to protect,” he continued. “When it’s framed as this large, bureaucratic, nebulous system, then that’s where I think you see these negative results. But [it’s different] when you’re talking about your community, your kids, your football team, maybe your employer or your spouse’s employer.”

When thinking about the role these views on education might play in November’s presidential election, though, Brenan, the Gallup researcher, argued that there are a number of other issues eclipsing education in voters’ minds. 

“The fact that they’re personally satisfied with their own children’s education might have something to do with that,” she said, adding, “I think education is always there as an issue kind of in the background. And unless these other matters — like immigration and the economy — are solved before election day, I’m not sure this is the year that education is going to get its due.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to the National Parents Union and to The 74.

Dozens of seats remained empty when classrooms fully reopened in the 2021-22 school year. Approaches to absenteeism in the 22,000-student district were failing, and administrators were forced to rethink how they could bring children back to school. 

The job was assigned to Shadae Harris, the district’s chief engagement officer. Harris and other staff decided to prioritize family engagement instead of using punitive measures — such as referrals to the juvenile justice system — to increase attendance.

“In order to really improve student attendance, we had to make sure that we were designing a system of engagement that really put families at the center,” Harris said.

Lack of family engagement is a national issue, as nearly 1 in 4 students are chronically absent. found that many parents don’t think chronic absenteeism is a problem and are unaware of how often their child misses class.

The poll, released in May by the National Parents Union, surveyed roughly 1,500 public school parents around the U.S.

“They haven’t been told [chronic absenteeism] is a problem,” said Keri Rodrigues, the organization’s co-founder. “They haven’t really defined what it is for them, so they’re not seeing that this is a major issue.”

The poll, which was distributed to parents in March, showed that 16% of respondents had a child who missed six to 10 days of school during the 2023-24 school year. Another 4% said their child missed 10 to 15 days, and 3% said their child missed more than 15 days.

Still, 82% of parents said they were unsure about whether chronic absenteeism existed at their child’s school or didn’t think it was widespread.

Students are considered chronically absent when they miss at least 10% of school, or roughly 18 days in most districts, according to , a national nonprofit. These students are more at risk for struggling academically, falling into poverty or dropping out of high school.

Only 8% of parents surveyed said they thought their child was absent more often than most students. Harris said the Richmond district found out through its own research and discussions with families that not only were parents unaware of what chronic absenteeism was, they didn’t think their children were skipping class as much as they actually were.

“You may have a family who thinks they’ve only missed three days, but it’s actually 13,” Harris said.

In response, Harris helped launch several family engagement initiatives in the 2021-22 school year. The district created an on its website, and teachers began to make home visits to families who had absent children. So far, the district has completed more than 40,000 home visits.

Through “that building of trust, that prioritizing of relationships, we were finding out what the root causes were,” Harris said. “There were issues around health, medical needs, transportation and housing

When Richmond staff found that several families were living in motels because they couldn’t afford rental deposits, they secured grant funding to help those students get stable housing. More than 130 families have been moved to better accommodations through this program, Harris said.

The district deployed school officials to work with parents distrustful of the school system, calling them family liaisons instead of attendance officers, which implied discipline instead of cooperation. Harris created a “We Love You Here” campaign to help families feel supported instead of judged for their children’s absences. 

If the district did need to get law enforcement involved because a student’s attendance failed to improve, court hearings were held in one of Richmond’s middle schools instead of at the courthouse. 

Harris said the middle school’s gym would be filled with booths, each one offering a community resource or service.

“Instead of ordering [the families] to do something more punitive, [the judge] orders them to see every single service,” Harris said. “So they have a little card and they visit the service. Then the judge will give them a certain amount of days to improve attendance.”

The most common reason for absences in the parents’ union poll was physical illness, followed by medical or dental appointments, weather, family emergencies and vacation. When asked why they think students are chronically absent, nearly 30% of respondents said it’s because they don’t want to attend school. About 26% attributed absences to illness and 21% to parents who don’t care.

More than half of respondents — 56% — said parents should face legal consequences if their child misses too much school without an approved reason. But Rodrigues said people need to focus more on why students don’t want to come to school.

“The only thing that’s going to solve their problem in a meaningful way is getting to the reason why kids don’t want to be in the classroom,” she said. “Part of that is because of the mental health crisis and social anxiety. The other piece is that we don’t present compelling reasons for them to actually want to be there and create that [fear] that they’re going to miss something if they don’t show up every single day.”

In the poll, 11% of parents said making school more engaging or fun would improve attendance, while 8% said children should be given incentives for showing up and 6% said schools need to engage with parents more.

Harris said she feels family engagement was the biggest reason why Richmond Public Schools has improved its chronic absenteeism rate, which was at 25% during the 2022-23 school year and at the end of 2023-24 had dropped to 19%.

“If you prioritize your relationships with families and students, you’ll actually get the information you need to find out, like, what are the things that motivate them? What are the things that give them joy?” Harris said. “Families actually already know. We just have to be quiet and listen to them and help shift some of the power to them. Because they’re the experts of their children.”

“In your second term, what would you do to make child care more affordable?” asked former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

The National Parents Union and Moms First, two nonprofits focused on family issues, petitioned CNN to ask the question, over 13,000 signatures to a producer the day before the debate.  

Tonight, has the opportunity to address the concerns of over 13,000 moms, advocates, & allies who want child care prioritized at the presidential debate.

This is our moment — and we deserve to know how our leaders plan to combat the child care crisis. .

— National Parents Union (@NationalParents)

But rather than focus on children, many critics said the two candidates behaved like them.

Trump ignored the question. He instead denied he’s ever and called his opponent the “worst president in the history of our country.” President Joe Biden’s comeback could be summed up as, “No, you are.” He briefly mentioned increasing the child care tax credit and urging employers to offer workplace child care, but also used some of his allotted time to insult Trump back. 

Their candidate’s performance left some Democrats and led to for Biden to step out of the race. While some party leaders have regrouped and hope to put the president’s bad night , the moment was a thorough for many parents who watched.

“You’re arguing about your freaking golf game and neither one of you has any clue about how hard the child care crisis is hitting American families,” said Keri Rodriques, president of the National Parents Union. “It was just kind of a depressing night overall.”

for child care average $11,000, and for some parents, access to free preschool doesn’t always solve the dilemma. A Las Vegas mom of four boys, Karri Siv has a 4-year-old who attends a federally funded Head Start center while her 6-year-old will start first grade this fall. As a nursing assistant who works 12-hour shifts, she can’t find care in the early morning or late evening. 

“There are a couple of 24-hour daycares, but [they’re] impossible to use because it’s just so expensive,” she said. “I’m literally living check to check.”

As part of the , an organization that supports low-income single mothers who work and go to school, she relies on a network of other moms for backup care. But those arrangements only provide a short-term fix. Siv sometimes misses work to stay home with her kids. “How much more can I call out before I get fired?” she asked.

For now, parents interested in the candidates’ positions on the issue will have study their records.

In 2021, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, which included $24 billion in relief funds to stabilize the industry during the pandemic. He ​​proposed to cap child care costs at 7% for families as part of his sweeping Build Back Better proposal, but it never got through Congress. 

Earlier this year, he issued an executive order that for about 100,000 families who receive child care subsidies. 

Those efforts encourage Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising, an advocacy group. She said the Biden administration has “worked tirelessly” to lower child care costs for families.

“Moms know that there’s a chasm between these two candidates on this issue,” she said in a statement. 

The Trump years, however, included significant expansions of programs for children and families. In 2018, Congress passed a $2.4 billion for child care — the largest-ever. Trump proposed a far smaller increase of $169 million and wanted to to other programs, but ultimately signed the budget without the change.

His 2017 tax cut package also doubled the child tax credit to $2,000. This year, a passed the House in January that would increase the refundable amount parents can receive. But the measure has stalled in the Senate, with some Republicans arguing it would allow parents to receive more money even if they work less. 

The proposed increase in the tax credit has been another priority for groups like the National Parents Union. But the candidates didn’t talk about that topic either. 

“There were no winners after that debate — certainly not American families,” the group said in . “Both candidates were embarrassingly short on policy details and left us with zero confidence that we will be better off four years from now than we are today.”

“If my son was home, then I would be taking care of him,” said the Stanford University student, who’s now working on a doctorate in neuroscience. “These programs really support people as they’re improving their lives.”

She was among the parents and advocates who celebrated in January when the oft-gridlocked House overwhelmingly passed a that includes a new increase for the program — one that experts project would benefit roughly in the first year. But the plan has hit an unexpected wall in the Senate where some Republicans are hoping to kill it.

“The chamber we never thought we would be waiting on is the Senate,” said Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of policy and action for the National Parents Union, one of several organizations ramping up pressure on skeptical Republicans before they return from recess April 8. She’s opposed to lawmakers revising the bill in order to appease opponents. “It will delay aid for families at a time when peanut butter costs $8.”

If the measure doesn’t pass, it could be well over a year before Congress takes up a similar proposal. That’s when they’ll consider renewing the , which doubled the child tax credit to $2,000 and expires at the end of 2025. But advocates say families need “” now as inflation continues to strain household budgets. The proposed child tax credit, which would apply to the families are filing this spring, is not as expansive as one Congress passed in 2021. But experts say it would help bring down , which has jumped since the larger benefit ran out.

“I think this is the best chance we have of passing the tax package this year,” said Elyssa Schmier, a vice president for government relations with , an advocacy group. “We hear from families every day that are struggling to afford child care, medicine for their children, groceries and rent. Any way we can provide them support… in a timely manner, not only benefits moms, families and children, but the local economy as well.”

The 2021 pandemic credit, which allowed families to receive up to $3,600 per child, split into monthly payments, cut child poverty in half, showed. As a parent living “paycheck to paycheck,” Izabel said the monthly payments allowed her to rely less on food pantries. 

But Democrats failed to get Congress to make that level of support permanent.

Senate finance Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican who leads the House Ways and Means Committee, struck the current bipartisan . The proposal would gradually increase the refundable limit of $1,600 per child to $2,000 by 2025 and allow parents to get the maximum benefit for each of their children. Right now, the more children in a family, the more parents have to earn to get the full credit. 

For example, a single mother of two earning $15,000 a year receives $1,875 under the existing 2017 rate, but under the Wyden-Smith proposal, would receive $3,600 on her 2023 taxes and $3,750 the following year. 

But Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the ranking Republican on the finance committee, strongly that would allow families to still earn the credit even if they work less. He thinks it turns the program into instead of one that rewards work. Wyden has offered to .

The bill needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and get to a floor vote. But experts say it’s unlikely Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would advance the legislation unless he’s confident it would pass. Republican is among those still in favor of the plan, which also includes tax incentives for businesses. But so far, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be .

“There are easily 10 Republicans who like the bill, but [it’s] unclear if they will vote yes without leadership being on board,” said David Plasterer, a senior associate at Results, an anti-poverty nonprofit. “The hope is that businesses and constituents will be all over Senate Republicans.”

 ‘Economic impact’

Democrats wanted to see relief for families similar to the 2021 expansion. That’s why of Connecticut, who voted against the House bill, called it “a watered-down policy for the sake of making a deal.”

The monthly payment provision, Plasterer said, was especially important to families with school-age children, who used the funds for basic needs like food and rent, but also spent it on child care, afterschool programs and educational materials.

But there’s also an advantage to getting a bigger tax refund — especially when it comes to education, he said. The extra money can go towards buying a car, which can help alleviate some of the transportation challenges that exacerbate chronic absenteeism, particularly in , he said.

Originally from rural Indiana, where he worked with low-income fathers at a social service agency, he said the only time during the year when families had thousands of dollars available was when they received their tax refund.

“Those families are doing repairs to their car, or buying a used car,” he said. “If you don’t have a car, you can’t get to school.”

Polling conducted by the National Parents Union shows among parents from both parties for expanding the tax credit. With the pro-business benefits in the plan, like deductions for research and development, Smith said she doesn’t understand why some Republicans aren’t on board. 

“When you think about the economic impact of the total package,” she said, “it should be a no brainer.”

The results come from a that polled 1,506 parents of K-12 public school students conducted by the National Parents Union between Feb. 6-8.

For the past four years, the organization has surveyed parents leading up to the State of the Union address, “because we want parents to be able to give their own State of the Union,” said founding president and 74 contributor Keri Rodrigues. All questions are written by parents who serve on the group’s Family Advisory Council, composed of delegates across the country that represent different intersections of American families.

While some results were unsurprising — like parents welcoming more financial support — they are still important, according to Rodrigues, because they serve as an essential message to policymakers about what parents care about. “We have these little, ‘We told you so moments.’ I think this is yet another one.”

Rodrigues said that voters are repeatedly and inaccurately told that parents are angriest about hot-button, culture war issues.

“We have consistently said to people, ‘Please, listen. Look at the data …’ It is clear,” she said.
“Parents are struggling with economic issues … Inflation, the cost of living, people living on the edge. Parents and families are scared and they’re hurting.” 

“We are obviously focused on education justice but economic justice for families is equally important to us,” Rodrigues added later, “because we really deal with the intersectional issues … we just don’t think you can separate those things.”

Overall, surveyed parents ranked K-12 education as the third most important issue for the president and Congress to address, behind the economy and immigration.

“In education, we think we’re the center of the universe, and we’re not,” Rodrigues said. “We’re a piece of the puzzle. It’s relevant, it’s in the mix, it’s definitely a concern. But we have to understand the intersectionality of the larger political context and where we fall in it and how it competes with other issues for the average voter and for the average American family.”

According to another released by the organization in November 2023, voters trust Democrats slightly more on education and Republicans by a small margin on the economy. The majority of parents reported wanting policymakers to work together to find bipartisan education policy solutions, even if it means compromising with people they disagree with.

“It just makes me crazy that our elected officials don’t listen,” Rodrigues said. “There are really big, important things that American families want us to do,” including the child tax credit, which during last week’s State of the Union, and stronger, evidence-based reading and literacy programs. 

“We can do big things,” she continued. “We can have unity … The majority of us can agree on some big, important things.”

Of parents surveyed in February, 87% were in favor of expanding the child tax credit and 85% were in favor of expanding subsidies to reduce health insurance costs. The vast majority were also in favor of providing funding directly to families of K-12 public school students to help them pay for supplemental resources such as tutoring. 

The survey did not include questions about more controversial vouchers, which let parents use taxpayer money to send their kids to private schools. The National Parents Union is known for both its criticism of traditional public schools, including teachers unions, that is sometimes seen as aligning with pro-school choice education reform forces and for elevating the voices of parents, especially lower-income parents of color.

Over 80% of surveyed families want the federal government to support all K-12 public schools via counseling and mental health services, free school lunch, free, high-quality preschool programs and increased funding for schools in low-income communities.

Among the 484 parents who responded to demographic questions, 27% consider themselves to be conservative, 24% liberal and 43% moderate. They were also socioeconomically and geographically diverse. About half of respondents were white, 15% Black, 24% Hispanic or Latino and 3% Asian. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

While the vast majority of school districts across the country have received additional federal funding to address COVID-related challenges, only 27% of parents reported having seen or heard anything about how these ESSER dollars were being used in their kids’ schools.

Just over 70% of parents, though, did report that their child’s public school had provided laptops or tablets for students since 2021 and about 45% said schools were offering additional tutoring or counseling services, which could have been supported by pandemic relief funds.

The ESSER funding results, Rodriguez said, reveal that parents did not get the voice they were promised in how that money was spent and that “a lot of things that we actually wanted — like additional mental health support — were not realized.” 

“Are we whipping laptops and chromebooks at kids? Hell yes we are. Is that necessarily a good thing? I mean a lot of parents would argue that that’s not actually getting us to the outcome.” 

Pro cell phones, wary of social media use 

To help inform the survey’s focus, Rodrigues said the National Parents Union presented data to their Family Advisory Council around student use of social media and its impact on mental health. 

A new understanding emerged from these discussions: Parents view cell phones and social media as separate issues, yet the two have become convoluted. This reframing was a lesson for her, she said, both as president of the organization and as a mother.

This same distinction was borne out in the survey results, she said: Parents want their kids to have access to their phones during the school day so that they can stay in touch with them, but they also recognize the dangers of social media and its negative impact on their children.

The top reasons kids use their phone, according to surveyed parents, is to contact family members, play games, contact friends, listen to music and take videos. A majority of parents (65%) also reported that their children used their phones for social media and 83% said there should be a minimum age limit on when kids are allowed to have their own social media accounts, with the largest share (20%) citing age 13. Just under 30% of parents said their children spend somewhere between four and five hours a day on their phone. 

Despite social media concerns, nearly half of parents said their child’s cell phone use had a positive impact on them and an additional 42% said phones have about an equally positive and negative impact. 

Parents listed a number of reasons they want their kids to take phones to school, with about 80% saying it was so they could use it in case of an emergency. About half of parents said it was an important tool for coordinating transportation to and from school, and 40% said they want their kids to be able to communicate with them about their mental health or other needs throughout the day. 

Just over half of parents believe that kids should sometimes be allowed to use their cell phones in school, while about a third believe students should be banned from using phones unless they’re needed for a medical condition or disability. There was very little parent support for locking up students’ cell phones in secure pouches or containers. 

“I think it goes back to something that we have been talking about since the beginning of the pandemic and the Great Parent Awakening,” Rodrigues said, “which is that the implicit trust that parents have in schools— that they’re going to tell us what’s going on and the communication — a lot of that has eroded. And that’s not toothpaste you can put back in the tube.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to the National Parents Union and to The 74.

With schools continuing to find themselves caught in emotional debates over students’ access to controversial books, the U.S. Department of Education has hired a new official to oversee its response to content challenges and take action if it finds that removing materials violated students’ civil rights.  

Matt Nosanchuk, a former Obama administration official and nonprofit leader whose work has focused on the Jewish and LGBTQ communities, started his job Monday as a deputy assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights. In the coming weeks, he’ll lead training sessions for schools and libraries on the shifting legal landscape related to restricting books available to students. The American Library Association will host the  Sept. 26.

“Across the country, communities are seeing a rise in efforts to ban books — efforts that are often designed to empty libraries and classrooms of literature about LGBTQ people, people of color, people of faith, key historical events and more,” a department official said in an email to reporters Thursday. “These efforts are a threat to student’s rights and freedoms.”

The move comes as conservative groups continue to push for the removal of books they argue are inappropriate for students and GOP leaders take action against districts with books that include sexual content or discuss historical racism. 

“The Department of Education has decided to lawlessly leverage its civil rights enforcement power to coerce school districts into keeping pornography in their libraries,” said Max Eden, a research fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 

, an advocacy organization, found almost 1,500 instances of book bans affecting 874 unique titles last school year. In many cases, parents complained that the books were too advanced or graphic for younger readers. But civil rights officials say removing a book just because it has LGBTQ characters or discusses racial violence is a form of discrimination.

In a first-of-its-kind resolution in May, the department found that a Georgia district may have created a “hostile environment” when it withdrew several books with LGBTQ and Black characters following parent complaints. The agreement required the Forsyth County Schools to notify students of its library book review process and survey middle and high school students about harassment based on race or sex and whether they feel comfortable reporting it. 

Some parent leaders applauded the appointment. 

“Leadership and energy on this has been a long time coming,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. She hopes “to see real action and resources for children, parents and families who have been caught in the crossfire of this hate-filled political campaign for far too long.”

In Florida, for example, a new states that districts must remove books that contain “sexual conduct” if the material is determined to be inappropriate. Those who disagree with a district’s decision to keep a book on the shelves can ask for a review by a special magistrate.

“That’s one more level of control from the state to overturn what they don’t like,” said Melissa Erickson, executive director of Alliance for Public Schools, a nonprofit. She’s expressed concerns about the ability of conservative-leaning school boards to dictate what’s taught in the classroom.

In 2021, some parents in the Williamson County, Tennessee, district sought to remove the children’s book “Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story,” an autobiography about Bridges’s experience as the first Black student to desegregate an all-white school in New Orleans. They objected to the word “injustice” and a reference to “a large crowd of angry white people.”

In Oklahoma, the state that said officials can downgrade a district’s accreditation if it has books with “sexualized content” that an average person might find unfit for students. The rule followed state Superintendent Ryan Walters’s claims that some included books such as “Gender Queer” and “Flamer” that feature graphic illustrations of sex. In several cases, the books had already been removed.

Some advocates say they’ve been unfairly criticized for supporting the rights of parents to restrict their children from access to explicit material.

“When people ask questions they’re crucified,” Nicki Neily, president and founder of Parents Defending Education, testified Tuesday in a . “Pretending that objections to minors accessing explicit sexual content is a threat to liberty and literature is a straw man and a distraction from real concerns about the quality of children’s education and whether students are safe in school.”

Margaret Crespo, superintendent in residence for ILO Group, an organization that supports women leaders in education, said Nosanchuk’s hiring is likely to rankle those who think the federal government should stay out of local school board matters.

She resigned in August as superintendent of the Laramie County School District 1, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where board members pushed for a policy in which books with sexually explicit content would be off limits unless to children without parents’ prior permission. The school board is .  

But Crespo acknowledged the department’s assistance could be helpful to districts.

“Many don’t have policy or state statute to guide the conversation,” she said, “and are struggling to meet the needs of all students.”

As this event shows, parents are extremely interested in shaping the educational experiences of their children and those in their communities. The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the role of parents in their children’s learning and challenged the traditional model of how educators and families interact. It was a shift no one was prepared for, yet a late 2021 found that over 90% of parents surveyed planned to be as or more involved in their children’s education than during the 2020-21 school year, when the effects of the pandemic on at-home learning were still being felt deeply. 

At the same time, an increasing number of parent-based advocacy groups, such as The Oakland Reach, PAVE, Atlanta Thrive, Moms for Liberty and the National Parents Union, have been with the education system. These parent advocates are helping families select high-quality schools, providing leadership training, examining district policies, sharing information about key education issues and investigating what is being taught in classrooms. 

As a result, educators are realizing the need to strengthen relationships with parents. 

Parent power is a core pillar of Rocketship’s model. Organizing committees of 10 to 15 parent volunteers each lead advocacy work at each of the network’s schools with the support of full-time school staff dedicated to building parent leaders. These committees have led campaigns on issues ranging from school-specific concerns to those that impact families across the country. Along with hosting mayoral forums, Rocketship families have pushed for better traffic safety measures, raised awareness about the importance of voting, participated in marches and rallies, and advocated for policies that are supportive of charter schools. For many parents, these experiences have led to increased self-confidence, lasting friendships and, in some cases, jobs in advocacy and government. And, as a recent shows, by participating in these activities, Rocketship parents are learning to use their voices to influence local and state policies that impact their families and communities.

Rocketship’s approach points to several key strategies for building and supporting parent leadership and advocacy. 

• Create a strong family engagement culture. Developing an environment where parents feel welcome, contribute to decision-making and have opportunities to get involved sets the foundation for later participation in advocacy efforts. Rocketship engages parents by asking them to complete “parent partner” hours, which they log for activities such as hosting school staff for home visits, reading with their children at home and attending community events. Through these interactions, parents build relationships at the school, which are critical for developing trust and making them feel comfortable transitioning into advocacy activities. Education organizers meet with parents for one-on-one meetings where they learn more about the advocacy program. Parents also decide on the advocacy issues they address, leading to buy-in and sustained efforts over time.  
• Commit to prioritizing parent leadership and advocacy across the organization. Advocacy is most effective when leaders at all levels understand and champion the work and provide the necessary structures and resources. Principals connect with families and encourage parents to participate in organizing initiatives (for example, by sharing information and providing food, child care and translation services). Network or district leaders allocate critical resources, such as funding for full-time staff positions like education organizers and ongoing professional training. Building school-level support requires parent advocates and education organizers to clearly communicate with school leaders about the purpose of the advocacy and provide opportunities for school staff to observe these activities in action. 
• Tailor advocacy efforts to meet the needs of the local community. The ability to respond to local needs and engage community members and organizations is a critical component of advocacy. Parents need the opportunity to learn about local concerns, and education organizers need to be familiar with cultural traditions, the local political landscape and other specifics so they can effectively assist with researching issues and organizing campaigns. Rocketship uses the model to structure its work with families and has found this model effective because it provides a common framework across the organization, yet is flexible enough to account for local needs. Additionally, collaborating with other organizations engaged in similar work affords access to more resources and connections, and expands reach of advocacy efforts.      

These strategies form the basis for how Rocketship school staff engage with families and encourage them to participate in advocacy efforts. As parents’ interest and involvement in their children’s education continues to increase, schools can leverage these strategies to build stronger family-school partnerships and robust, meaningful opportunities for parent leadership.

The  passed 213 to 208, with five Republicans voting against it. 

“Teachers unions and education bureaucrats worked to push progressive politics in classrooms while keeping parents in the dark,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House education committee, said during Thursday’s floor debate. “The Bill of Rights …aims to end that and shine a light on what is happening in schools.”

But with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that it would face a “dead end,” the legislation is unlikely to get far in the Democratic-controlled Senate. 

House Democrats — who renamed it the “politics over parents act” — say the legislation duplicates existing policies and rights and would micromanage how local schools interact with families. 

“This legislation has nothing to do with parental involvement, parental engagement, parental empowerment,” said Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “It has everything to do with jamming the extreme MAGA Republican ideology down the throats of the children and the parents of the United States of America.”

For years, educators who work with families have longed for this level of national attention to the role parents play in their children’s education. But some experts called the Republican approach adversarial and heavy-handed. Republicans view parents rights as a cornerstone of their agenda and are expected to carry the issue into next year’s elections. Even if the House bill dies in the Senate, the debate likely won’t.

Family engagement experts, meanwhile, say they’re hoping for a less-partisan discussion about building trust between educators and parents.

“If we’re creating bills that pit parents against teachers, kids lose,” said Vito Borrello, executive director of the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement. 

Democrats, he said, have sent the wrong message at times, pointing to former Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s that parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach and the that educators know “better than anyone” what students need. But the GOP legislation, he said, approaches parents rights from a “vigilante perspective.”

Among other provisions, the bill would require schools to post curricula online, provide lists of all books and other reading materials in the library and notify parents of the affiliations of any outside speakers at school events. 

Prior to the vote, the House approved several amendments, including one that would make schools disclose when they eliminate any gifted and talented programs and another requiring educators to turn over videos or recordings of any “violent activity” at school. Another stating that parents have a right to “timely notice” of a cyberattack against a school that could expose student or parent information received overwhelming support from both parties, passing 420 to 5.

But amendments that would have eliminated the Department of Education, sent Title I funds directly to families to use for private schools or homeschooling, and block grant education funding to the states failed. 

Dozens of education organizations, including AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the NAACP and The Education Trust, endorsed , led by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, that emphasized inclusion, high-quality schools and a well-rounded education. But the bill failed, 223 to 203, with one Democrat, Sharice Davids of Kansas, voting against. 

Charles Barone, vice president for K-12 policy at Democrats for Education Reform, said the Senate would likely let the bill GOP die and not try to negotiate a compromise. The question is whether passage of the bill gives Republicans momentum going into the election next year. 

“As a general election strategy, it’s pretty ill-advised,” Barone said. “There is a set of voters that buys their line of argument, but that set is pretty narrow. This is such an old playbook.”

The Biden administration has already expressed its disapproval. “The administration strongly supports actions that empower parents to engage with their children’s teachers and schools, like enabling parents to take time off to attend school meetings,” the White House statement said. “Legislation should not politicize our children’s education. It should deliver the resources that schools and families actually need.”

Gender identity provision

The administration’s statement drew attention to a provision that it said would make LGBTQ students feel less welcome. The legislation would require schools to get parental consent if a student wants to officially change their gender markers or pronouns or use facilities inconsistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. During the debate, Foxx clarified that the bill would not require counselors or teachers to “out” students if they discuss such topics in confidence.

During the education committee’s mark-up of the bill March 8, several Democrats said not all trans students have supportive parents and that a “one-size-fits-all” federal mandate could put already-vulnerable students at a greater risk. 

But Republican Tim Walberg of Michigan, who pushed for notification, said that informing parents of their child’s request would alert educators to potential maltreatment.

“When a child goes on a field trip or fails a test … their parents are told and often required to sign some sort of acknowledgement,” he said. “Why should the small things require notification but something as significant as a child’s pronouns or a change in accommodations be withheld from the people who raise them care for them?” 

Civil rights advocates argue that even if the bill fails in the Senate, the House’s move still harms trans students. 

“More trans kids are going to wake up reminded that there are leaders in this country who don’t want them to be safe,” said Liz King, senior director of the Education Equity Program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The GOP’s bill is inspired by laws that have already passed in several states, like , that allow parents to contest books used in school lessons and libraries and prevent discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the early grades. Gov. Ron DeSantis now plans to apply to all grades.

Melissa Erickson, executive director of Florida’s Alliance for Public Schools, said the laws are “exacerbating the ” and don’t reflect the concerns of most parents. She doesn’t see the need for a national version. 

“I thought education was left to the states,” she said. “Parents have a right to be heard, but there is a difference between being heard and being accommodated.”

This week’s events in the nation’s capital drew 75 representatives from the National Parents Union, who lobbied against the GOP bill and in favor of Bonamici’s amendment. They met with U.S. Department of Education officials and they visited every House member’s office. 

But their highlight was getting from New York Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who cited their

“We’re all gripping our seats,” said National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues. “When we got up to leave, the Democrats stopped on the floor and waved at us. For these parents, it was a powerful moment.”

In response to the Republicans’ controversial parental rights bill, House Democrats plan to introduce alternative legislation Friday that will call for “inclusive” schools and oppose efforts to censor curriculum.

Led by Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, the resolution follows Wednesday’s marathon education committee session, which stretched 16 hours into Thursday morning and further clarified the partisan split over parents’ role in their children’s education. 

While the GOP’s approach emphasizes accommodating parents’ requests for information, the Democrats’ version focuses on ensuring schools provide a high-quality education and don’t discriminate against students. 

Republicans say their , which passed 25 to 17 and now moves to the full House, would increase transparency into curriculum, school funding and safety efforts. But Bonamici said during the committee meeting that it has “discriminatory undertones,” because parents could use it to remove materials about topics they oppose, and would “pit parents and families against their kids’ teachers and schools.” 

For a month, her staff has worked with the National PTA, the National Parents Union, an advocacy group, and others on the Democratic “Bill of Rights for Students and Parents.” The resolution says “students benefit from opportunities to learn in diverse, well-funded … schools alongside peers who have had different life experiences” and calls for schools to use materials that are “historically accurate” and “reflect the powerful diversity of the nation.”

The passionate debate this week, which at times turned argumentative, was likely a preview of what’s to come in the full House. Democrats characterized the bill as an effort to weaken public education and micromanage how schools operate. Republicans, however, said schools have silenced parents, excluded them from discussions of their children’s gender identity and prioritized teachers unions’ demands during the pandemic.

“This bill is about one simple and fundamental principle — parents should always have a seat at the table,” said Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow, lead author of the Republicans’ bill. “Rather than opening the doors to welcome parents as partners, [schools] would rather slam them shut and have government bureaucrats make all the decisions.”

Along those lines, the House Judiciary Committee is investigating a past incident that contributed to why the GOP thinks such legislation is needed. On Monday, committee Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio former leaders of the National School Boards Association to revisit the controversy surrounding a September 2021 letter asking for federal law enforcement’s help in addressing threats of violence against school officials. 

Republicans argue the letter prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to in assessing whether some parents — angry about school closures, masking and curriculum issues — posed a threat. The association .

Democrats said school districts were never trying to stifle parents’ legitimate concerns. They argued Wednesday that the Republicans’ Parents Bill of Rights is unnecessary because states and districts already have policies in place that allow for and welcome parent input. 

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx, New York, teacher and principal, described past situations when parents were uncomfortable with books taught in a course. He met with them and they opted to remove their children from those lessons. 

“Us sitting here, having this conversation is a waste of taxpayer time and money,” he said. “We are dealing with an issue that is already on the books.”

Other Democrats asked the majority how such a law would be enforced and whether it would lead to withholding funds from schools if there’s a violation.

Debate over curriculum

Members of both parties introduced a wide array of amendments that would significantly expand the bill — topics ranging from cyberbullying and teacher pay to third-grade reading and charging parents fees for copies of curriculum. Two of the 30 amendments Democrats proposed were accepted, one that supports all students having internet access and another prohibiting the federal government from getting involved in curriculum and school administration issues. All 15 of the Republicans’ amendments passed. 

An amendment from New York Republican Brandon Williams, which says it’s important for schools to teach students about the Holocaust, was among those approved. But Republicans rejected amendments from Democrats that would prevent schools from excluding Black, Latino, LGBTQ and Asian American/Pacific Islander history, saying that the federal government has no place in curriculum. Democrats called it a double standard.

“It is highly hypocritical that the argument can be made for the history that affects you and your family yet the history that affects me and my family is unwanted, unaccepted and oftentimes offensive on this committee,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, a one-time National Teacher of the Year. “If we are in fact saying that the federal government has no place in dictating curriculum, either we teach it all or we don’t teach anything.”

Democrats opposed other amendments that they said target transgender students, including one from Rep. Bob Good of Virgina that would require schools to notify parents if their student’s gender identity is inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth. 

“We have legislators who want to make trans kids a problem in this country,” said Rep, Primala Jayapal of Washington, who has a trans daughter. “Stop doing this to our kids.”

During the same meeting, the committee passed that would prohibit students identified male at birth from competing in girls sports.

‘More bureaucratic requirements’

Despite the committee devoting so much time to parental rights, some experts note that there’s no legal basis for the Republicans’ law in the first place because education is a state matter and is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

“This is not constitutional and would mainly create more bureaucratic requirements, not truly empower parents,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. 

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, who worked with Bonamici on the resolution, said parents could use such a bill to tie educators’ hands by suing in federal court.

“It’s going to make it incredibly messy for anything to happen in classrooms at all, because literally everything will be challenged,” she said. 

At the same time, she said Bonamici’s resolution would better define a high-quality education and offer a legal recourse for parents when states don’t adequately fund schools.

“The only way we have ever started down the path toward equity in education in large-scale, meaningful ways has been when parents have been able to sue for justice in federal court,” she said, naming desegregation cases Brown v. Board of Education and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education as examples. “We need to strengthen our federal laws to continue down that path.”

McCluskey said Republicans could more productively spend their time focusing on school choice, adding that states have made “great strides” in passing education savings accounts. Other parent advocates would like to see the federal government guarantee students a high-quality education, but argue the debate over parents’ rights misses the mark.

“Both parties have swung and missed on post-pandemic parent empowerment,” said Ben Austin, founder of Education Civil Rights Now, which has been working in states to pass laws requiring students to receive a high-quality education. “Transparency is necessary, but it’s far from sufficient. Just because [parents] can see a budget doesn’t mean [they] can do anything about it.”

Last Wednesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California joined fellow GOP members to introduce the , which calls for greater transparency into what districts teach, how much they spend and how they publicly report whether violence has occurred at a school. The next step is for education committee members to review and offer any amendments before it reaches the floor.

“It’s just so tone deaf to where parents are. How do you have a parent’s bill of rights in 2023 that doesn’t mention student progress or the right to read and write?” asked Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. McCarthy’s press conference, she said, lacked representation of minority parents and children. “I was like, ‘Do Republicans know any Black and brown people?’ “

She organized a gathering of several parent groups who plan to meet Monday with Democratic leaders in the House in an effort to defeat the bill.

Republicans pledged to introduce such a bill once they captured the House majority, arguing that schools ignored parents’ pleas to reopen during the pandemic and have pushed controversial lessons about race and gender. But with Democrats still in control of the Senate, it’s highly unlikely the bill would pass in its current form. In 2021, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri sponsored , but it never received a hearing. 

The House legislation echoes laws that many Republican-led states, including Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, . Some experts note that for a federal version, but that issue didn’t come up last week. 

“Parents are not going to be kept in the dark,” Rep. Aaron Bean of Florida promised during last week’s event. “Parents are going to be part of the educational process.”

He and other House members heard from a Fairfax County, Virginia parent who said her child was suspended 11 times for not wearing a mask when the district still had a mandate and from a parent who filed hundreds of public record requests with the in Rhode Island seeking information on how schools teach history and gender issues. The school board considered suing the parent, but ultimately did not. 

Rodrigues and — a nonpartisan organization — say such bills are an effort to keep the culture wars alive. They stress that federal and many state laws already give parents the right to examine curriculum and opt their children out of lessons they find inappropriate. 

Rodrigues said she wouldn’t feel comfortable proposing her own bill of rights until the organization consulted a broad mix of families. 

But based on the National Parents Union’s , she would like to see, for example, guarantees that students graduate ready to succeed in college without remediation, that parents have up-to-date information on their children’s academic progress and that schools offer free afterschool programs and tutoring as needed. 

Last year, Rodrigues pushed for the U.S. Department of Education to form a parent council so Education Secretary Miguel Cardona could regularly hear from parents involved in their children’s schools.

But the department nixed the idea after conservative organizations sued in federal court, saying that the proposed council lacked representation from their groups and didn’t follow proper advisory committee procedures.

National Parents Union members continue to bring their concerns to Cardona anyway. Several attended his January speech outlining priorities, such as multilingualism and higher teacher pay.

“They said, ‘We didn’t hear you talking about the regression that children with special needs faced,’” Rodrigues said. ‘They really held his feet to the fire.”

According to the department, Cardona also continues to meet with families during any school visits, and agency staff follow up with parents later, if needed.

“Parent partnership is not about giving in to the loudest voices or political grandstanding,” the secretary wrote in timed to Republicans’ bill. “It’s about welcoming the voices of all families, and inviting parents to be a real part of decision-making processes in education.”

Being a low-income child in the U.S. is daunting and outright depressing. Living in a family with income below the poverty line as a child is associated with lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health in adulthood and lower lifetime earnings than more affluent children attain. However, can blunt these negative effects of poverty and bring poor children closer to equal opportunity and equal access to extracurricular activities like piano lessons and baseball clubs, afterschool tutoring, healthy meals at dinnertime, mentorship and more quality time with their loved ones. All these things taken together not only level the playing field for disadvantaged kids, but help them thrive and flourish into adulthood.

Families across the country are facing unprecedented challenges, forcing them to make hard choices at the grocery store, the gas pump, in housing and for child care. The National Parents Union’s found the majority of families were extremely concerned about the rise of everyday costs and that Child Tax Credit monthly checks made a difference. Of the 68% of parents who received an expanded Child Tax Credit, said it had an impact on their family’s financial situation and their bottom line. Interestingly enough, although parents are not certain the midterm election results will have a net positive impact on their family, kids’ education and the economy, they are very clear on actions the federal government could take: in our December poll support restoring the expanded Child Tax Credit.

It is not a surprise the Child Tax Credit expansion resulted in an unprecedented reduction in households experiencing food insecurity: 14.8% of households in 2020 experienced food insecurity, compared with 12.5% in 2021. This means that as a result of the expansion, 2.5 million fewer children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, even though the since October 2021.

Housing costs have also risen exponentially. In 2021, , the largest increase in 34 years of data collected. A by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that 70% of Child Tax Credit recipients used their payments to supplement their housing costs — and evictions dropped dramatically as a result.

These factors, and more, have a direct impact on learning. Generation A is experiencing an education emergency, as more students are reading, writing and doing math below grade level than before COVID-19 struck. This year’s showed the largest declines in math ever reported. Kids are in need of extended learning opportunities — quality programs and extracurricular learning opportunities to help them catch up. The Child Tax Credit would give families the breathing room that they need to hire tutors, pay for sports teams and dance classes, and provide their children with access to joyful moments of learning to complement classroom learning that they might not otherwise have.

The National Parents Union is asking all families and allies to join our fight by to support the restoration of the Child Tax Credit expansion and prevent 2.1 million children from falling back into poverty. Congress has until Thursday, Dec. 22 to pass an end-of-year tax package that could include relief for hardworking families as the 117^th Congress winnows down.

This is not about the entitlement state — it is about raising the bar for the quality of life of America’s children. An expanded Child Tax Credit, along with the ‘s new , are necessary policies for helping families overcome needless mental and physical challenges due to an inability to afford healthy food options. When Sen. Mitch McConnell insists that any end-of-year tax deal must prioritize defense spending over domestic policies, my question is: Why do lawmakers continue to stymie efforts to lift 4 million kids out of poverty? The country needs to fortify the future by prioritizing children — their health, education, resiliency. It is a moral imperative to create the conditions in which kids are free to experience joy, shielded from unnecessary suffering, and able to access resources that will positively impact their lives. 

Reinstating the Child Tax Credit expansion in the end-of-year tax package should be a no-brainer, a genuine and unprecedented demonstration that Congress — representing everyday, hardworking Americans — does indeed care about the wellness of the nation’s poorest children.

While 82% of parents said they are very or extremely likely to vote in the election, just 14% called K-12 education a top concern — well below the economy (53%) and slightly behind abortion (21%) and health care (17%).

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, the advocacy group that sponsored the poll, said the numbers reflect parents’ hunger for change.

“We have moved into a position where we’re not going to be ignored,” she said. “We’ve seen too much.”

, experts began seeing that parental outrage over closed schools, COVID protocols, and district handling of race and gender issues had given way to more immediate concerns about groceries and rent. While almost two-thirds of parents say the quality of their local schools still affects their family, 86% are more troubled by “the rising cost of everyday purchases.” 

“It’s understandable that inflation would dominate voter concerns since they encounter it every day,” said John Bailey, an advisor to the Walton Family Foundation and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “These extra costs will crowd out other spending for the kids like afterschool programs and summer camps.”

Just a third of parents said they know a lot about where House and Senate hopefuls stand on education. In fact, they’ve heard less about schools than any other topic. 

That doesn’t mean that parents no longer care about politicians’ plans to improve schools. On poll questions related to education, Rodrigues noted that fewer parents are blaming the pandemic for low academic performance. They are more focused on fundamental questions about whether schools can prepare students for the future and deliver an adequate education. 

“The tide is turning,” she said.

Sixty-two percent of parents said they are very or extremely concerned about schools’ ability to provide quality teaching and instruction, compared with 55% who feel that way about schools’ handling of learning loss. 

Congressional candidates might not be talking about education, but it’s still a prominent issue for gubernatorial candidates, with Republican incumbents such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt blaming Democrats and their union supporters for long school closures, mask mandates and classroom lessons they say confuse students about race and gender. They’ve sought to portray themselves as the party most concerned with parents’ rights. 

At least one organization is drawing attention to conservative policies some Republicans have proposed or supported, such as banning transgender students from participating in sports and restricting what students read in school. Last week, , a nonpartisan group, announced it’s spending $300,000 on ads in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri. 

The Pennsylvania ad focuses on a district banning books and the Missouri spot calls out a school board member for comments about transgender students and students with disabilities. But the Ohio ad denounces a bill that would require female athletes to undergo a genital inspection if they were suspected of being transgender. Following a backlash, lawmakers the language. The state board of education is also considering urging districts not to comply with the Biden administration’s plans to extend federal protections against discrimination and harassment to transgender students. 

“Across the country, families and students are being failed by extremist politicians who care more about pushing divisive culture wars than providing a high quality age-appropriate education,” Heather Harding, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement.

‘Indifferent and unresponsive’

The campaign was formed to combat efforts by groups such as Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project PAC, which have mobilized to elect conservative school board members. And over the summer, polls suggested that Republicans were gaining an edge with voters on education. 

But this latest survey — based on a sample of 1,022 registered voters with school-age children — shows Democrats could be regaining voters’ trust as the disruptions of the pandemic slowly fade.

Forty-one percent of respondents said they have more faith in Democrats to handle the challenges facing K-12 schools, compared to 29% who chose Republicans. Rodrigues said those earlier polls didn’t focus specifically on parents. Even if they don’t always approve Democrats’ decisions, if the question is who parents think can “take us into the future on education, Democrats still have that lead,” she said.

The overall sample of parents leans to the left, with 51% saying they would probably or definitely vote for Democrats and 40% choosing Republicans. 

But a year ago, that might have been different, Bailey said. 

“This time last year, parents were still juggling school quarantines, which in some ways were more disruptive than school closures,” he said. Either way, a “common theme is that parents are frustrated by a system they think is indifferent and unresponsive to their needs.”

Disclosure: John Bailey is an adviser to the Walton Family Foundation, which provides financial support to .

Judge Royce Lamberth, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that the council has an organized structure, a “fixed” membership and a purpose — to “gather information or advice from parents” and “inform the department’s approach to educational policy” — that would qualify it as a formal government advisory group. In that case, it would have to post a public notice, announce meetings and have an official charter.

But he said he couldn’t make a final ruling for either side until he knows whether the members will give their own individual views or offer consensus opinions as a group.

“None of the documents in the record indicate what is supposed to happen at council meetings, and defendants represent that there is still no plan for what is supposed to happen,” he said.

For now, he has ordered both the plaintiffs in the case and the Biden administration to offer more details on that point. 

But even if Lambert allows the council to proceed without any changes, it may have less power than some parents originally hoped.

During an August hearing in the case, Chris Edelman, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, argued that the council doesn’t have to meet the requirements of the advisory committee law because it will act more as a “sounding board” for the department.

Some parent leaders appointed to the council thought they’d have more influence. 

“It is different from what I thought would happen,” said Matthew John Rodriguez, a Cuban immigrant in Schaumburg, Illinois, picked to represent the nonprofit National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement.

The department announced the parent council in June, and parent leaders tapped to participate thought they’d start meeting over the summer to prepare for the new school year. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the council would “work together to serve the best interest of students and ensure they have the academic and mental health support they need to recover from the pandemic and thrive in the future.” But the plaintiffs — , , and argued that the department did not follow procedures in establishing the group and picked organizations only supportive of the Democrats’ agenda. 

Nicki Neily, president of Parents Defending Education — a conservative watchdog group opposed to teaching and curriculum focused on race and gender — characterized the judge’s comments as a partial victory. 

“We are gratified by the District Court’s decision that the council fulfills three of the four requirements of [the act], and are confident that the court-ordered discovery will clearly answer the one outstanding question, vindicating our position,” she said in a statement.

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union — one of the organizations asked to appoint members to the council — said there’s “not enough to go on” to make a comment on Lamberth’s opinion. But she noted that the judge did rule that , a conservative nonprofit led by former Trump administration officials, doesn’t have enough “standing to challenge the council’s ideological balance” because it is not an education-focused organization.

Even if the council doesn’t get to officially advise the department, Rodriquez said that he still thinks the members will bring valuable perspectives. He has a 27-year-old son who received special education services and is raising a 12-year-old grandson who just entered junior high school. 

“Our experiences, stories and information we can provide might be able to guide [and] influence how they think,” he said “or frame things to make their decisions.”

Biden, who made student debt relief part of his presidential campaign, also extended a on student loan payments through the end of the year.

“Education is a ticket to a better life, but over time, that ticket has become too expensive,” the president said at the White House. “The burden is so heavy that even if you graduate, you may not have access to the middle class life that the college degree once provided.”  

The decision could lift some of the financial burden off teachers who took out loans to fund their education. A from the National Education Association showed that 45% of educators were student loan borrowers and over half of those still have a balance, averaging almost $59,000.

“Nobody goes into teaching for the money, but you have to survive,” said Joshua Starr, managing partner of the International Center for Leadership in Education, affiliated with education publisher Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt. Previously, he served as CEO of PDK International, a membership organization for educators. 

Making college more affordable, he said, “is one part of a larger fabric that we have to consider when we want to promote the idea that teaching is a sustainable job.”

The president gave himself an Aug. 31 deadline to announce his decision — the date that the pause on federal student loan payments was set to expire. His announcement from Republicans, who have said the policy gives borrowers will make inflation worse and ignores the law. Earlier this month, the GOP introduced that would limit loan forgiveness. But Democrats largely applauded the move, with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, chair of the education committee, calling it a “milestone moment.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education provided an update on the $32 billion in student debt relief previously approved since the Democrats took office. That includes $10 billion for over 175,000 borrowers in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program since last October. 

Under former Secretary Betsy DeVos, the vast majority in the program were even though they took education and other service sector jobs that they believed would qualify. To be eligible for forgiveness, borrowers in the program had to submit a waiver, which expires at the end of October. Democrats Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to extend the waiver until at least July 1 of next year. 

‘Struggling to rebound’

As the cost of a has increased, the NEA report showed that educators 35 and under were more likely to take out student loans, compared to older educators. Student debt is also more common among Black than white educators — 56% compared with 44%.

Some advocates said the president’s action doesn’t go far enough. 

“Canceling $10,000 in student loan debt merely puts a Band-Aid on the real problem of reforming the system that has landed us in this mess — and within years we will be right back at the same point,” the National Parents Union said in a statement.

Kim Cook, CEO of the nonprofit National College Attainment Network, noted that Pell grants for low-income students — at an average of about $4,500 — don’t cover even half the annual cost of higher education. 

“Fast-rising and unmanageable levels of student debt are the result of a broken system for financing higher education in which many parents and students are forced to take out loans they cannot reasonably be expected to repay,” she said in a statement. The organization advocates for doubling Pell grant awards.

Experts say loan forgiveness would especially benefit early educators, who make far less than those in the K-12 system and often kept their programs open when schools were closed.  

“The pandemic shined a light on the low pay for child care providers who are leaving the industry in droves, causing a shortage of child care options for families,” said Alexandra Patterson, director of policy and strategy for Home Grown, a nonprofit advocating for home-based providers. Loan forgiveness, she said, would benefit “a workforce that is severely underpaid and is still struggling to rebound from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while wrestling with the challenges of inflation.”

Adrienne Briggs, who runs Lil’ Bits Family Child Care Home in Philadelphia, earned her master’s in early-childhood education in 2013, but she still carries over $50,000 in debt. She didn’t qualify for relief though the revamped Public School Loan Forgiveness program because she owns her own business.

Through an income-based repayment program, her $650 monthly payments have dropped to $150, but that just stretched out the debt over a longer period. The administration is also relaxing those repayment terms, lowering the percentage borrowers have to pay from 10% to 5% of their income. And it will forgive original loan balances of $12,000 after 10 years. 

“Even having my master’s did not change my position,” said Briggs, who serves families who receive child care subsidies and wouldn’t be able to pay higher rates if she raised them. “All I ended up getting was a bill that has been haunting me all this time.”

In federal court Wednesday, Chris Edelman, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, said it would likely be mid-September before the meets “to better understand how schools and students are coping as they adjust back to the classroom.”

And that’s only if Judge Royce Lamberth, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, allows the council to proceed without having to start from scratch. 

On Wednesday, Lamberth denied the plaintiffs’ request to put an immediate stop to the council’s activities, promising to rule before the group meets on whether it violated federal law. 

Under , there are three ways to establish a federal advisory committee — by statute, presidential order or through a federal agency. The agency involved has to place a notice in the Federal Register, appoint an administrator to the committee and establish a charter outlining the group’s purpose and how often it will meet. The department hasn’t taken those steps.

The department had planned to hold the first meeting with parent representatives this summer. Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, one of the groups involved, expected it in July.

After issuing an initial press release, the department put up a second that included an email to get updates on the council’s work. The notice said the council “meets to discuss how children are recovering,” prompting the plaintiffs, three conservative organizations, to argue the department was violating the law. To this date, however, there have not been any meetings.

The lawsuit, filed July 6, argues that the council violated the law’s requirement that groups giving agencies input on potential rules or legislation be “fairly balanced.” Cardona, they contend, chose organizations that would fall in line with the department’s agenda.

“The department chose organizations … based on their ability to develop camaraderie so that they would give good advice as a group,” said Christopher Mills, an attorney for the plaintiffs — the , a conservative nonprofit led by former Trump administration officials, , a political action committee in Loudoun County, Virginia, and , a watchdog group opposed to teaching and curriculum focused on race and gender.

But Edelman countered that the group will function more as a “sounding board” for the department, that membership will change over time and that the council won’t weigh in on specific policy.

In the initial announcement, Cardona described the council as an effort to ensure students “have the academic and mental health support they need to recover from the pandemic and thrive in the future.” For Cardona, who initially faced criticism for making public comments that emphasized the pandemic’s burden on educators, the council offers a chance for parents to have a more visible role as the department attempts to rebuild trust between schools and families.

“To have the leadership of the secretary’s office leaning in with good intentions is … an epic win for all parents across the country,” said Ashara Baker, a mother of a first grader at a Rochester, New York, charter school who was appointed to the council by the National Parents Union. As far as getting the group started, she said, “The sooner the better.”

She called the lawsuit “a distraction.”

Other committees challenged 

The department currently has , according to its website, including the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity and the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Tuesday’s Federal Register, for example, included a meeting for the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

Education officials aren’t the only members of the Biden administration who have faced challenges related to advisory committee membership. A former member of an Environmental Protection Agency committee , arguing that the agency removed industry representatives in an attempt to “sideline anyone who might dissent from the president’s climate-change agenda.” They argued that the committee wasn’t “fairly balanced” as the law requires.

In March, a district court judge denied the plaintiff’s request to stop the committee from meeting.

The Trump administration, however, had to disband a after a federal judge sided with an environmental advocacy group in a 2018 lawsuit. The plaintiffs argued that potential profiteers from the import of hides, heads and tusks from Africa stacked the committee.

The makeup of the education department’s parent council is a key focus of the current lawsuit. Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, expressed , calling the chosen groups “Biden fans” who are “glaringly out-of-step with the majority of frustrated parents who have been showing up in huge numbers to school board meetings across red and blue America.”

Sanzi and Rodrigues have over the Department of Justice’s warning last fall about against school officials and board members.

It’s unclear whether Parents Defending Education or Fight for Schools and Families wants to be part of the parent council. Sanzi told The 74 in an email that she didn’t think the group would address any parent concerns over curriculum.

But the groups on the list — including Fathers Incorporated, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Military Family Association — won’t necessarily determine what the parents have to say, said Patience Peabody, executive director of the Flamboyan Foundation, which supports family engagement efforts, especially in the District of Columbia schools.

“The member organizations are among the many voices. They are the facilitators. They are bringing the real stories and voices to the table,” she said, adding that the council “only works if that happens.”

Baker, for example, is a charter school parent, but said a lot of families have children in both charter and traditional schools. After remote learning, she said her daughter is still “struggling with letters” and hasn’t begun to recognize entire words. Her charter school didn’t provide tutoring, so she paid for it herself. 

“Whether it’s a charter, or district or private school,” she said, “we’re all doing our best and doing what’s going to get our kids across the finish line.”

The council will include representatives from 14 organizations that advocate for giving parents a voice in their children’s education — including families involved in charters, homeschooling and private schools.

In preparation for the 2022-23 school year, the council’s “listening sessions” are slated to explore what schools can do to help students recover from the pandemic, according to the department’s announcement. The meetings will emphasize finding “constructive ways to help families engage at the local level.” 

“Would I have liked to see it happen a year ago? Of course,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, one of the groups involved. She began advocating for such an initiative during the Trump administration, but added, “It’s the first time where we’re really getting … a group of folks representing parents and families at the table. It’s unprecedented.”

Other participating groups include the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which supports families who have children with disabilities; Mocha Moms, a network of Black moms’ groups; and the National PTA.

In public comments, Cardona, the father of two teenagers, frequently notes that he’s a “parent first” and has made “roundtable” discussions with parents part of his visits to schools across the country. But his department has also faced criticism from parent leaders who say he’s been more vocal about the pandemic’s than on parents who had to endure months of remote learning and are still asking for tutoring to help their children catch up. Meanwhile, parents have gained new political power. Those who felt overlooked by unions and Democratic leaders who were slow to reopen schools helped tilt the 2021 Virginia governor’s race in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Rodrigues said she pushed for bringing the “boldest, baddest and most beautiful parent organizers in the game” to council gatherings. Ashara Baker, a Rochester, New York, charter school advocate, and Lakisha Young, CEO of The Oakland Reach — which opened remote learning hubs and trains parents to be literacy tutors — are expected to participate in the council’s first gathering in July. 

The next step, Rodrigues said, is for the department to formally define “parent and family engagement” so it can hold districts accountable. 

“Right now, family engagement can kind of mean whatever you want it to be,” she said. “It can be, ‘We showed you a PowerPoint. We sent you an email. We sent a flyer home in a backpack.’ That’s not good enough to get big-time federal money.” 

Bibb Hubbard, president of Learning Heroes, which helps parents understand their children’s academic progress, said the American Rescue Plan’s requirement that districts include parent perspectives in planning how to spend relief funds was a significant development.

“I have seen this team step up and sincerely make an effort to figure out how to be representative of all parents as they look at their policies and guidance,” she said, adding that Cardona has joined the organization’s parent town hall for the past two years. 

But she added that she hopes the department “gives the council some specific authority to shape policy” and includes parents “traditionally not listened to.” 

Megan Bacigalupi, executive director of CA Parent Power, said that should include parents in California, “where schools were closed the longest.” State-level committees, she said, haven’t been as inclusive. A on enrollment loss, announced in April, doesn’t include parent representatives. 

Like Rodrigues, Sonya Thomas, executive director of Nashville Propel, a local advocacy group — and part of the — told President Joe Biden while he was still campaigning not to ignore parent perspectives. 

“Do they have the real-life stories of parents who are from struggling communities?” she asked about the new council. “I want to see real partnership. It’s really taking our feedback and using it, and not being defensive with it.”

Sixty-one percent assigned top grades for how their child’s school is “addressing any learning challenges related to the pandemic,” and 60 percent gave an A or B for “providing resources to support students’ mental health.”

Schools get higher marks, however, for keeping parents updated on school policies, assessing where children stand academically and even requirements regarding vaccines, masks and quarantines. Almost three-quarters of parents give schools an A or B in these areas.

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, which conducted the survey, said the results suggest parents are “still in the trenches with teachers” but have less faith in the nation’s leaders to make bold improvements to schools. Thirty-eight percent of the sample of just over 1,000 parents give President Joe Biden an A or B on handling schools’ responses to the pandemic, and thirty-six percent give Education Secretary Miguel Cardona high grades on that question.

Over half of respondents said they’ve heard “not much” or “nothing at all” about federal relief funds or how they can be used for education.

“Why does everything look and feel the same?” Rodrigues asked. “[Parents] are not feeling the impact of this money.”

Conducted 20 times since the beginning of the pandemic, the advocacy organization’s poll captures parents’ opinions on the most pressing COVID-related issues facing schools and families — from parents’ willingness to vaccinate their children to how well they think schools are serving students with special needs. Over time, Rodrigues said she has seen parents consistently say they’re concerned about their children’s well-being, but that overall, schools “failed to listen to us.” 

Some district leaders say they’re hearing the similar concerns about students’ emotional and behavior needs from their staff. In the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota, Superintendent David Law noted that focusing on students’ mental health needs is a top priority for teachers.

“Students are needier than they were in the past,” he said, adding that in his district of 37,000, the 20 percent that did not return to in-person learning last year are “really struggling with the transition” this year.

But even though schools now have the money to hire more counselors and social workers, “the personnel can’t be had,” said Daniel Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Addressing those behavioral and emotional needs is “falling more and more on the shoulders of classroom teachers.”

The latest results, gathered by Echelon Insights, which conducts opinion research, show 40 percent of parents consider staffing shortages to be a major or moderate problem at their child’s school. Almost the same percentage responded that student behavior issues are affecting learning, and about a third said behavior issues were serious enough to create safety risks. 

While parent protests and disruptions at school board meetings have dominated the news, just 16 percent of parents responding consider conflicts over masks, vaccines or quarantine policies to be a major problem in their children’s schools. More than half answered that disagreements over these issues are either a minor problem or non-existent.

But in some parts of the country, those debates are more intense, and Domenich said superintendents over mask mandates don’t view the issues as minor.

“In [the Houston Independent School District], we definitely saw the divide with parents on mask mandates after Superintendent [Millard] House and the school board voted for mask mandates,” said Wendy Gonzales-Neal, a National Parents Union delegate in Texas and the executive director of advocacy group My Child My Voice. “Parents are fighting with schools and our elected officials to keep our kids safe.”

Despite districts’ increasing use of test-to-stay policies — which allow close contacts of students who test positive for COVID-19 to avoid quarantine — just over half of parents, 53 percent, still think students who have been exposed should stay home from school for at least 14 days. 

About a third said schools should allow students to come back to class as long as they test negative multiple times in a week, and 5 percent said schools shouldn’t do anything if students are exposed.

Parents just want consistency, Rodrigues said. 

“Quarantines are a toss up. They can change from school to school,” she said. “We can’t control COVID, but parents need to know what is going to happen.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation, the City Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York provide financial support to the and .

Middle- and upper-income families were more likely to say their schools solicited parent opinions than those with household incomes of less than $50,000 a year. Just 17 percent of low-income parents say they were asked how the money should be used, versus 28 percent of those earning $75,000 or more.

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Echelon Insights surveyed 1,000 parents on behalf of the organization from Sept. 9 to 13, after the school year had begun in most places. Slightly more than half, or 51 percent, had heard little or nothing about the funds, while just 13 percent said they have heard a lot.

The parents union pegged the release of its latest poll to the launch of a campaign called Everyday Parents Impacting Change, or EPIC, with the aim of holding local officials accountable for how they spend their American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER lll) funds.

“Since we weren’t invited to a full seat at the table, we really need to play a watchdog role,” says Keri Rodrigues, parents union president and co-founder. “If you aren’t going to engage us on our priorities, we are going to hold you accountable for where every single one of these dollars is going.”

District spending plans are due to be submitted to states Oct. 1, but early glimpses show that in a number of places, school system leaders have committed to expenditures that will create steep fiscal cliffs when the stimulus funds run out in three years. Among these is increasing salaries, plugging pre-pandemic budget deficits caused by long-term enrollment declines and hiring new permanent staff.

While the federal funding can be used for an array of expenses, Congress has sought to prod schools to spend a hefty portion on among underserved children who were already at increased risk of performing below their affluent classmates.

Ninety percent of the funds are being sent directly to districts according to a formula that prioritizes schools that enroll large numbers of disadvantaged students. School systems are supposed to spend a fifth of the money to address pandemic learning losses using strategies backed by hard evidence.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents surveyed by the parents union said their top priorities for the funds include computers, high-speed internet access, services for students with disabilities — who were particularly impacted by COVID-related school shutdowns — face masks, hand sanitizer and free food. Three-fourths would prioritize counselors, social workers and psychologists, career and college prep programs, staff training on creating inclusive environments and individual learning plans for each student.

Schools that fail to solicit community input, parents union leaders say, are missing an opportunity to seek guidance from families who have gained a much keener sense of their children’s interests and struggles since the pandemic forced them to supervise distance learning.

“Black and brown families throughout the pandemic have been more engaged than ever,” says Rodrigues. “To now turn your back on them and say, ‘We’ve got it from here’ really underestimates these families.”

The poll diverged on one major point from another recent survey by the journal Education Next, which found diminished appetite for change among a weary public. The parents union’s monthly polls continue to find a strong desire for schools to come out of the pandemic with better instruction and climate.

Sixty percent of respondents told parent union pollsters they want schools to find new ways to teach children as a result of the pandemic, while 57 percent said education leaders should use the infusion of funds to make “bold changes.” A third (34 percent) want the money to be used to return to the status quo.

Both the Education Next and parents union polls found strong support for continued annual testing of students, with the new survey finding 55 percent of parents want exams to continue and 39 percent thinking tests should be skipped this year.

are available on the parents union website.

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation, the City Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York provide financial support to the National Parents Union and .

Momentum may be building toward a full school reopening this fall, but some families say it’s too late.

“My daughter will never go back to public school,” said Michelle Walker of McMinnville, Oregon, outside Portland. She took out a loan to move her fourth-grader MacKenzie into a private school and is working to mobilize families in reopening groups across the country to do something similar.

Nationally, public schools lost 1.5 million students last school year — roughly a 3 percent drop and the largest since the beginning of the century, according to federal data. Much of that enrollment decline was driven by parents holding their kindergartners out a year. The question now is whether the profound frustration over remote learning and mask mandates, combined with recent outrage over critical race theory, could motivate more families to seek other options.

Experts say it’s too soon to know for sure whether enrollment loss will continue, but some see signs that the downward trend isn’t over.

In Virginia’s , officials initially projected that the 2,000 students who left the district last school year would return this fall. But in May, board members said they weren’t so sure and were recalculating the budget based on a lower figure of 28,500 students, down from almost 30,000.

Some of those families not returning could be homeschooling, according to a from the Home School Legal Defense Association, which suggested the jump in that population seen last year will continue. And EdChoice’s surveys showed in homeschoolers from 8 percent in 2020 to 14 percent this year

Walker, an organizer of , is among those calling for parents to abandon public schools. The volunteer network of reopening advocates plans to announce a “s�ٰ������” Thursday, with parents pledging to homeschool or enroll their children in pods or private schools this fall. Across various platforms including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and email, Walker said the network has reached roughly 180,000 participants. In Oregon alone, the group’s goal is to see 30 percent of the state’s more than 560,000 students withdraw before October, which would drastically impact state funding for education.

‘Attacks on public education’

Whether the group has the power to follow through on its bold promise or not, one thing is clear: District leaders are they won’t make up last year’s enrollment as they watch more students leave for . Some hope to to school this fall, using outreach methods such as text messages and home visits. And public school advocates are worried about the lingering impact of school board protests over critical race theory.

Joshua Starr, CEO of PDK International, a professional organization that the public annually on attitudes toward public schools, said parents value racial diversity in schools. A couple months ago he thought the uproar surrounding anti-racist efforts would blow over.

“Now I think otherwise,” he said, but added there is not yet reliable data on what “the silent, but reasonable, majority actually thinks” about the theory.

New voters shows more than half of parents feel positive toward public schools in general and even more positive toward their local schools, with 60 percent giving them an A or B. But Bruce Fuller, an education and sociology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said “a slice of parents still appear angry over union leaders’ reticence to reopen schools last winter, even after the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] gave its OK.”

He predicted further jumps in enrollment by August, especially if districts don’t allow virtual or more personalized options for families who prefer that.

The California survey didn’t specifically ask about critical race theory — a legal argument that racism is embedded in U.S. systems and institutions. But Democrats and Republicans were split over whether schools should spend more time on lessons about racism and inequality.

Open Schools USA formed in November over the reopening issue. In March, organizers held marking one year of the pandemic in at least 50 cities. But Eileen Chollet, a Fairfax, Virginia, parent who interacts with Walker’s group through Facebook, said she wondered whether it had enough organizing power to “stage a national campaign.”

But Sarah Ronchak, an Elk River, Minnesota, parent and another Open Schools USA organizer, said their efforts are part of a broader movement away from traditional schools.“It will definitely take off,” she said. “However, it may take one more year of public school for people that are on the fence to really make a move on it.”

Ronchak, a full-time youth basketball referee, said she got involved with the group because “distance learning was an absolute nightmare” for her autistic son. And when he returned to school in February, he was bullied for not wearing a mask even though he had an exemption, she said. Minnesota has lifted its statewide mask mandate, but some local jurisdictions haven’t. She said she’ll likely homeschool this fall.

Walker said the group has members across the political spectrum, but their concerns have expanded to include potential COVID-19 vaccination requirements and universal mask use, issues that more conservatives have opposed. Nonetheless, she added, they recoil at the term “Trumpers.” The leaders ran a GoFundMe campaign to set up their website, but otherwise the group has no outside funders. Walker spends her own money on flyers, posters and graphic design.

Some organizers of the group are also active in , which has filed litigation over practices in schools related to critical race theory. Founder Elana Yaron Fishbein has become a leading voice on Fox News arguing schools are trying to indoctrinate children, and members of local chapters are behind many of the at school board meetings.

“Parents want children to learn about racism. We don’t want it taught necessarily in the way that it is,” said Walker, a Democrat. “If you’re going to tell the bad and the ugly, you need to tell the good and the beautiful.”

National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues said Open Schools USA has sought guidance from her group in the past, but is not an affiliate. Rodrigues, however, agrees more families may be considering other options this fall.

“We watched a nationwide failure of our public education system,” she said. “I expect to see a percentage of parents that say, ‘I’ve actually found something that works better for my kids.’”

The National Parents Union’s most shows that more than 40 percent of parents would still choose online learning or a hybrid model this fall, but the survey didn’t specifically ask about leaving public schools.

Walker’s hope is that if districts see more enrollment loss, they’ll pay more attention to the needs of parents.

“After their numbers drop drastically, our hope is to be afforded a meeting where we can negotiate terms of enrollment,” she said. “It’s insane that no one has represented our children throughout the decision-making process that directly affected them.”

When the RAND Corp. during the winter, COVID-19 health concerns, delaying kindergarten and opposition to virtual instruction were the leading reasons behind enrollment loss, not “politically motivated anti-[critical race theory] reasons,” said Heather Schwartz, a senior researcher at RAND. But she added, “the subject is fast-moving.”

Khalilah Harris, acting vice president for K-12 policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, characterized the protests over critical race theory as mostly a fringe issue, but added “fringe can become mainstream with the right messaging.” She doesn’t, however, expect “large swaths of communities would move their children to private school and explain it as a result of not wanting students to learn difficult yet accurate American history.”

Some advocates for in-person learning have never strayed from their core issue. They include Chollet, a member of Open Fairfax County Schools. The Fairfax district students last year, but is expecting to regain most of that this fall.

Some partisan Democrats tend to “paint all parents in favor of open schools as right-wing astroturf,” she said. “I won’t deny that the reopening groups are probably redder than the surrounding areas, but Fairfax is one of the bluest areas in the country.”

With three children in Arizona’s Mesa Public Schools, Krista Puruhito has a vested interest in how the district plans to spend its $160 million in federal relief funds. When the district held a series of community budget meetings in May, she was among the more than 300 participants who voiced requests ranging from water bottle filling stations to more teaching assistants in the classroom.

Puruhito also wants to see expanded arts integration and afterschool enrichment programs — especially in communities where families can’t afford such extras.

“They shouldn’t be directing this to all the high-income schools that already have $100,000 in their PTOs,” she said.

Mesa, like every other district across the country, is required to undertake what the American Rescue Plan calls “meaningful consultation” with community members over how to spend $122 billion for K-12 before October 2024. Some districts are taking extensive steps to reach out to their communities, providing translation during virtual meetings and posting updates on how the money will be used. But leaders say it’s challenging to balance competing interests and some parents feel districts have taken shortcuts.

A from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, to be released Wednesday, shows that just over a third of districts have posted details about how they’re involving the public in designing their plans.

“This is surprising given this is a mandated expectation for receiving funds,” said Bree Dusseault, a practitioner-in-residence at the center.

With remote learning giving parents a stronger role in their children’s education over the past year, advocacy groups across the country have pressed for broad participation from diverse groups of parents, and for multiple opportunities to inform decisions about how the money is spent.

“We have been really pushing back against the idea that surveys are enough to check the box. It’s just not enough,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. “Where we have parent power on the ground, our expectation is that we have a seat at the table.”

But will they be OK with the limits on that power? “A lot of people can’t tell the difference between engagement and decision making,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “Listening to you and doing what you want are two very different things.”

The law initially gave districts three months to collect input and submit plans to their states, but AASA and the 19-member Large Countywide and Suburban District Consortium the U.S. Department of Education for more flexibility. The that districts could take longer to submit their plans as long as they were completed within a reasonable amount of time.

Owning ‘the final product’

The Center’s review highlights a few examples of what researchers call more “robust” examples of community engagement. The Baltimore City Public Schools the results of surveys and input sessions online, and the Boston Public Schools, which is making plans to spend $400 million in relief funds, created a separate commission to lead the process.

“When you have a lot of money, it’s often harder to spend,” Boston Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in an interview, adding that she’s drawing on 10 years of experience as Minnesota’s education commissioner to give the public an opportunity to “own the final product.”

Over the course of six meetings — translated into at least eight languages — over 1,200 community members participated. The district released of its plan last week and will continue to collect feedback.

“It’s forced us to think about what investments pay dividends over time,” said Chris Smith, executive director of Boston After School and Beyond and a member of the commission.

Some of the funding will be spent on facility improvements to “show to the city what’s been missing for so long and what needs to continue,” Cassellius said. “We have schools without cafeterias, science labs, libraries.”

But another priority was getting funds to local schools as quickly as possible. The commission agreed to allocate the money to schools based on how many low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities they serve.

In Virginia, meanwhile, a June public hearing held by Fairfax County Public Schools provided a glimpse into how challenging it might be for district leaders to balance requests from different parties. Kimberly Adams, president of the local teachers union, argued for raises and bonuses for those who taught in person last school year.

“We’ve continued to lose ground in recruitment and retention,” she said. The district for hundreds of students with disabilities because of a shortage of teachers and the district in last year’s budget.

But Eileen Chollet, the parent of a student with special needs, said the district should be reimbursing families who spent money on therapists and private tutoring because their children missed out on services during remote learning.

“My daughter, like all the other children in this county, needs help now,” she said.

‘Time and input’

In Minnesota, parent advocate Khulia Pringle helped organize a virtual town hall for the Minneapolis Public Schools and wanted to do the same in neighboring St. Paul. Leaders were already in the midst of holding community forums, but added another with Pringle as a co-moderator.

“I let everyone know that this was rushed, and I didn’t like the process,” Pringle said.

Stacey Gray Akyea, the district’s director of research, evaluation and assessment, agreed the timeline for getting community input was short — from June 17-28. But she said there will be more opportunities for parents to provide feedback. While most TItle I schools are experienced at gathering parent input, Akyea said this level of engagement may be new for some districts.

“As a researcher, I feel strongly that we [shouldn’t] ask people to give their time and input without using it,” she said, adding that she told Pringle she would ensure parents would have additional opportunities to be heard. The district is now translating its report based on community input into four languages.

Typically, parents who are already plugged into district issues are more likely to be aware of opportunities to make recommendations on major initiatives.

“You work your way up the ladder,” said Puruhito, who took part in forums when the Mesa district was searching for a new superintendent. “If you participated in one, you get invited to more.”

But planning to spend what leaders have called a once-in-generation influx of federal dollars on K-12 schools is being held on a national scale and with specific expectations that districts will reach students, parents, unions, administrators, civil rights groups and others.

“Parents want school to look different and be more engaging,” Holly Williams, Mesa’s associate superintendent, said of the district’s meetings with parents. Surprisingly, she said she didn’t hear a lot of concerns about learning loss. “They weren’t worried that their kids didn’t know algebra. They were worried their kids didn’t have connections.”

Academic recovery is one of the ways districts are required to spend a large chunk — 20 percent — of their funds. Summer school, extending the school day and one-on-one tutoring are among the approaches districts are using. But community feedback in Atlanta shows that even a pandemic is not enough of a reason to mess with school start times.

The Atlanta Public Schools proposed extending elementary students’ day by 30 minutes this fall to address learning loss. But to make bus routes work, they would have needed to set an earlier start time for high school students.

That’s when the district ran into stiff from parents and students. The district later backed off and added 15 minutes at both ends of the elementary schedule.

It’s challenging to find a balance between additional learning time and “just burning out kids,” said Lisa Bracken, chief financial officer for the district. “You can only bring them out so many extra days and add so many minutes to the day before you hit a tipping point.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said Monday he wants “families at the table” as schools prepare for the fall, offering welcome news to parents who have felt shut out of efforts to help their children recover from the pandemic.

Last week, his staff took steps to fill up the guest list by contacting the , a network of advocacy groups that has been critical of distance learning, especially for low-income and minority students, and has pushed for schools to reopen.

On April 28, Christian Rhodes, chief of staff for the department’s Office of Elementary and Secretary of Education, met with Keri Rodrigues, National Parents Union’s founding president, and Marisol Rerucha, the group’s chief of strategy and partnerships.

Since then, the group’s representatives have been asked to work with the department’s School Climate and Discipline Work Group and the Office of Parent Engagement and Communication, and to be involved in a meeting regarding federal relief funds later this week.

“They feel like we represent a really important constituency,” Rodrigues said. “We were very clear with them. We’re not here just to be disseminating information from [the department]. We need to be informing policy.”

The department’s invitation to the organization to be part of its “kitchen cabinet” follows accusations that the have had greater access to the secretary and the administration than other interest groups. The National Parents Union represents groups that have largely blamed unions for slowing down the reopening process and say schools have failed their children during the pandemic. Parent organizations were not represented during Cardona’s March 24 reopening summit, and in early April, Rodrigues said she was “furious” that the department had not yet reached out to any groups within the network. With states facing a June 7 deadline to submit plans to the department for spending American Rescue Plan funds, some of those local groups now want to have more say in how districts spend that money.

“States are looking at revisiting what it means to have families engaged,” Cardona said at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference. “This pandemic taught us that we have to be nimble, we have to be flexible and we have to meet families where they are.”

As part of his “Help is Here” tour to local schools, mostly in the Northeast, the secretary has interacted with some parents who don’t represent particular advocacy groups. And Rodrigues said her group is directing the department to other organizations “doing important work.”

Rachel Thomas, a spokeswoman for the education department, said working with parents is “critical” to addressing academic inequities made worse by the pandemic.

“It’s with parents’ partnership that we can build our education system back better than it was before, and make sure our schools are welcoming environments that work for all students, not just some,” she said.

In his comments to reporters, Cardona added that it’s important to ensure the relief funds are used for students that were the most negatively impacted during school closures.

The National Parents Union is working with the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington to create “a checklist” that families can use to track how districts are using relief funds. The materials are expected to be released next week.

“The questions are oriented around whether students are getting the individualized supports they need and whether parents are getting individualized information about their child’s progress,” said Robin Lake, director of the center.

Rodrigues suggested many of the local groups that have been advocating for reopening schools will now become “watchdogs” to track the funding.

“It’s safe to say that until the pandemic, many parents never really gave much thought to how the school system operated, or how they used their funds,” said Christy Hudson, a member of Open Fairfax County Schools, a parents’ group in Virginia. With the relief funds, she added, “it’s more than likely that parents are going to stay involved, and keep an eye on the school systems.”

Founded in early 2020, the National Parent Union receives funding from reform-oriented and pro-charter foundations. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the group has polled parents monthly on topics such as school reopening, parents’ preferences for in-person or remote learning, and how prepared they think their children are for the next grade level.

The organization’s most show 58 percent of parents want both in-person and remote options this fall — an issue where Cardona’s expectations and parents’ preferences are likely to diverge.

Some districts and state leaders say they plan to limit or eliminate this fall, and Cardona said he doesn’t want “a system where students who were underserved in the past select remote learning, because they don’t feel that that school is welcoming or safe for them.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and The City Fund provide financial support to the National Parents Union and The 74.