Parents across America are done with the politicization of education at the expense of student achievement, but activists still don’t get it. Consider Montgomery County, Md., where a diverse group of religious parents’ objections to their school board’s authoritarian decrees will be heard this week by the Supreme Court.
The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, exposes the deep corruption infecting schools across America – and provides the court with an opportunity to reaffirm parental rights in education for the first time in decades.
In 2021, I created an organization to address the increasing politicization of K-12 education. I recognized that American education wasn’t in great shape, but the extent of the abuses that we have uncovered over the last four years has been truly shocking.
Consider, for example, the $1 billion in grants provided by the Biden administration to promote a DEI ideology that says all children are either victims or oppressors and that many of them are responsible for other people’s past actions because of their skin color. Or consider the more than 1,200 districts around the country that require teachers hide students’ gender identity from their families, the racially-exclusionary school programming and speech-silencing policies, among other things. It is truly astonishing to see an education system that won back-to-back world wars and put men on the moon degraded to the point of spending its finite resources on yoga and knitting circles.
As bureaucrats hyper-focused schools on identity politics and equity, student achievement suffered. Look no further than the Nation’s Report Card, which revealed that 72 percent of eighth graders taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam couldn’t even score at the “proficient” level, despite the billions spent annually on the system. And this was no anomaly — fourth and eighth grade reading scores are at their lowest in 30 years.
Amid this undeclared education emergency, the Montgomery County School Board decided that, rather than simply teach students reading, writing, and arithmetic — the very reason families enroll their children in public schools — to introduce “inclusive” storybooks on sexual themes into the district’s pre K-12th grade curriculum. To the deep dismay of hundreds of parents from various faith backgrounds, these books celebrated transgender activism, gay pride parades and same-sex marriage. They introduced age-inappropriate buzz words and topics for 3-and-4-year-olds such as “leather belt,” “drag queen,” and the names of trans activists and sex workers. Books targeting 10-and-11-year-olds discussed what it means to be “non-binary.”
Adding insult to injury, shortly after introducing these books, the school board announced that it planned to end its own long-standing policy that had previously provided parents with the right to be notified of — and opt their children out of — course materials on human sexuality and family life.
Unsurprisingly, families rebelled against this on First Amendment and parental rights grounds, requesting the right to opt their children out of classes. And rather than listening and responding to constituents’ concerns, the school board mocked them. Parents were told their religious beliefs were tantamount to “hate” and that their concerns were “overblown.” In the face of this bureaucratic intransigence, some families pulled their children out of the district, paying out of pocket for schools that better fit their needs while their tax dollars continue to be used to prop up a district that flagrantly disrespected them.
The Montgomery County School Board’s rigid refusal to back down is perplexing, given how deeply unpopular its position is: 77 percent of Americans support parental opt-outs for such themes. A 2024 Defending Education poll found that 74 percent of parents oppose teachers providing instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary school.
Even the County’s own principals expressed concerns about the appropriateness of the controversial books, which they said were “dismissive” of religion.
Mahmoud v. Taylor presents the Court with a unique opportunity to clarify that parents know best when it comes to the education of their own children, and that schools have no business politicizing education at students’ expense. For the sake of families around the country with school-aged children, let’s hope the justices seize the moment.
Nicole Neily is the founder of Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education).