The New Parents' Rights Movement, Education, and Equality

Kristine L. Bowman

Michigan State University Professor of Law, College of Law; Professor of Education Policy and Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, College of Education. J.D., M.A. Duke University, Ph.D. Political Science, University of Queensland.

I enjoyed presenting the ideas in this Essay at the University of Chicago, Loyola University-Chicago, and the Michigan Education Policy Leaders Program kickoff event and I benefited from the comments of colleagues and participants in those events. I am particularly grateful to Emily Buss and to MSU doctoral and law students for their insights. Last but not least, James Marmaduke and the University of Chicago Law Review staff provided exceptional support during the publication process.

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All education law and policy is built on one theory of educational decision-making or another. In this Essay, I have identified the theory of educational decision-making that underlies a core aspect of education law today, as synthesized in the Restatement of Children and the Law. It is a theory that brings the state, professional educators, and parents to the table. The New Parents’ Rights Movement, by contrast, seeks to center parents as the primary educational decision-makers, and the consequences of such a shift have the potential to exacerbate the escalating polarization that grips our country by unsettling the balance in educational decision-making that has anchored education law and policy for a century or more. Furthermore, the New Parents’ Rights Movement also seeks to enact a series of changes that not only give parents more control over their own children, but also would allow some parents to impose anti-egalitarian values broadly within public schools by controlling the content of curriculum, removing books from public school libraries, and introducing other policies that further marginalize individuals who are already minoritized based on their race, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Such law and policy changes have been proposed across the country and at all levels of government. The resulting battles are intense, and for good reason.

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