Education Week - February 23, 2022 - 9

a professor at Columbia University's
Teachers College, associated with the
progressive movement in education.
In that situation, the American Legion
moved beyond calling Rugg's
work subversive propaganda and encouraged
parents to scrutinize " other
parts of the curriculum to see where
else subversion was occurring, " said
Charles Dorn, the chair of the education
department at Bowdoin College
who specializes in how schools approach
patriotism. Rugg's textbooks
became less popular in the wake of
such attacks.
In part due to controversies like the
one involving Rugg, Dorn said, " textbook
publishers tend to make their
content less controversial when it
comes to history. "
Today, factors like social media and
blanket coverage from fast-moving
news outlets bring a new dynamic to
such tensions.
When Youngkin's office promoted
the email address for the public on Jan.
21, his team did not single out critical
race theory and related issues. Instead,
the notice highlighted details of the
governor's executive order allowing
parents to opt out of local mask mandates
in schools. The press release encouraged
them to email his office with
questions or concerns.
Yet on Jan. 24, he told radio host John
Fredericks that people should use the
email address to notify his office about
things like " privilege bingo, " a reference
to a classroom activity in which
students are asked to recognize advantages
they enjoy if they are white or
male. This activity gained prominence
after one class in a large Virginia district
used it.
But the government email address
quickly became a target for Youngkin's
critics; reports emerged of people filling
up the inbox by praising the performance
of teachers and schools.
The transparency of the tip line itself
has also become an issue. Youngkin's
office has declined to publicly release
emails to it, stating that they are protected
" working papers and correspondence. "
(A spokesperson for Youngkin
did not respond to a request for comment
from Education Week about the
issue.)
Setting aside such issues, some believe
the attention Youngkin and other
officials are paying to education largely
reflects their desire to speak directly to
parents who feel frustrated and betrayed,
especially by the past two years.
" It's a system that is unresponsive to
parents' concerns, whatever they are, "
said Ginny Gentles, a fellow at the
conservative Independent Women's
Forum who backed Youngkin's 2021
campaign, referring to public schools
and their performance during the pandemic.
" There are plenty of parents
who say: I want the public school I
thought I had back. "
She also cited other factors behind
the new push for school transparency
and feedback from parents. Among
them: prominent videos of school
board members reacting poorly to parents
worried about things like learning
during the pandemic, and fear that
schools are putting less emphasis than
before on academic achievement and
the traditional bedrocks of math and
literacy.
Yet schools can solve the skepticism
many parents now feel about
curriculum by proactively sharing
material with them and telling individual
parents what lessons their
children are responding to positively,
laws or no laws, Gentles said. " If you
put physical textbooks in parents'
hands, they will calm down, " Gentles
said.
But others see a different dynamic.
Jon Becker, an associate professor
of educational leadership at Virginia
Commonwealth University, said that
Youngkin's stance reflects the position
of people who want public institutions
to serve their desires and only their desires,
while spurning the give-and-take
that reflects traditional decisionmaking
in local schools.
" Increasingly, families are acting not
as members of a deliberative democracy,
but as citizens who mostly care
about their own individual needs and
wants and acting like a consumer, "
Becker said. " They're trying to have it
both ways. "
He also stressed that schools have
long-established ways for parents to
provide input on issues like curriculum.
" Going to the governor to tattle
on your teacher is not a good process, "
Becker said.
At the same time, Meissel said that
typically, when Virginia officials release
draft curriculum standards on
different topics and take them on a
" road show " around the state, parental
input tends to be minimal or nonexistent.
Meanwhile,
the response from GOPrun
states, even to relatively high-profile
complaints about school curriculum,
isn't always predictable.
In November, the Tennessee Department
of Education declined to
investigate a complaint that a local
school district was in violation of a
new state law banning critical race
theory because it used the Wit and
Wisdom curriculum that includes content
about Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Ruby Bridges. The complaint alleged
that this curriculum taught children to
" hate their country, each other and/or
themselves. "
The department stated it wouldn't
probe the issue because the complaint
didn't follow the processes laid out in
state law, and not necessarily because
the complaint lacked merit.
Becker said that while he sees it as a
discouraging sign for Youngkin's education
priorities, it is also vulnerable to
being mocked and subverted.
And Gentles said that while she
thinks the tip line is a helpful signal
from Youngkin to many parents, she
doubts it will lead to a sweeping effort
by the government to hold teachers
and schools accountable.
" It's probably going to go to a state
employee who will process it in a
spreadsheet and probably won't lead
to a lot of action, " Gentles said.
'Our school is really transparent'
Parental concerns and disagreements
don't have to lead to big political
disputes.
Not too long ago, a parent of a student
at Van Duyn Elementary School
in Syracuse, N.Y., expressed concern
about what was being taught in a
4th grade class about LGBTQ and
social-justice issues and said, in effect:
I don't want my child learning
about this.
Reba Y. Hodge, the school's vice
principal, recalled that the child's
teacher was able to draw on a relationship
she had previously built
with her students' parents in dealing
with the complaint. That foundation
allowed the teacher to better understand
the parent's anxiety, clarify
what was being taught, and show
how it was different from the parent's
original understanding.
" That only comes if you feel confident
in what you're doing and you
can rest assured that what you're
talking about and what you're teaching
about is important for all students
in the classroom, " Hodge said.
She added that when teachers
bank that kind of trust early on with
parents, " You're able to have these
tough conversations with them " if
there is tension later.
Such incidents are uncommon
at her school, where most teachers
would feel comfortable freely sharing
such materials with parents if
asked, Hodge noted.
Yet she also questioned the motivations
of those who said nothing about
past instruction that provided a " Eurocentric "
view of history, yet are now
claiming that history lessons with a
different orientation should be viewed
with mistrust and picked apart.
" Our school is really transparent
about what we believe and what we
value here, " Hodge said.
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Education Week - February 23, 2022

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